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Regeneration and 
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REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 






REGENERATION AND 
RECONSTRUCTION 


BY 


S. B. JOHN 


WITH A FOREWORD BY 
THE REV. JOHN CLIFFORD, C.H., M.A., D.D. 



NEW 



YORK 


GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 

1923 ' 



• .ft; 

J* 1923 



(-4// Rights Reserved) 


PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BV HEADLEY BROTHERS, 
l8, DEVONSHIRE STREET, E.C.2 ; AND ASHFORD, KENT. 







INTRODUCTION 


The bulk of what appears in the following pages was 
written in the winter of 1919-1920, and necessarily 
took shape under the situation as the writer then saw 
it. Though much has happened since, nothing has 
transpired to invalidate the argument or to deprive 
the appeal of its urgency. The present situation only 
underlines both. The author has not, therefore, made 
any alteration to what he then wrote, save for a few 
references to events which have taken place later. He 
is well aware that there is nothing strikingly new in 
these pages ; indeed, it is part of his plea that the 
remedy for the tragedy of our world is an old, old story, 
which is perfectly familiar to most of our countrymen. 
But the remedy has not been, and is not being, applied. 
He is profoundly convinced that the key to the situation 
lies in the hands of Christian people, to whom he makes 
his appeal, and it is in the hope that this little book 
may awaken some response from the Christian Church 
that he ventures to send it forth. He rejoices in the 
campaign of Personal Evangelism which has been 
inaugurated, notably in the Free Churches, for it is 
in the regeneration of the individual that hope alone 
lies. But the call to the Church to face the situation 


INTRODUCTION 


and act is clamant, unless such action is taken our 
civilisation is doomed. There is no hope from any 
other quarter. It is “ Christ or Chaos/* and, without 
any apology, he would address the Church in the 
language of prophecy, “ Awake, awake, put on thy 
strength, 0 Zion, put on thy beautiful garments, 0 
Jerusalem.* * 

I would like to add my appreciation of Dr. 
Clifford’s kindly foreword. 

S. B. John. 


Fleckney, 

September, 1922 


FOREWORD 


The power of this book is primarily in its statement of 
truth fundamental to the life of the individual, of the 
nation, and of the peoples of the world, but also in its 
seasonableness. “ All things," says Shakespeare, 
“ by season seasoned are to their just praise and due 
perfection." Mr. John utters the truth for all time, 
but specially for the needs of our world civilisation 
at this hour. His emphasis is on the central and 
incomputable value of the human soul, on personality, 
but on personality pervaded and enriched by the spirit 
of God. 

Thus it forms a powerful and persuasive appeal 
for Personal Evangelism ; and so, by its insight, strong 
and clear style and numerous citations from the best 
authorities, will render a real and abundant service in 
this day of our need. 


John Clifford. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I THE COLLAPSE OF CIVILISATION 10 

II THE DIVINE BASIS OF CIVILISATION 25 

III SPIRITUAL REGENERATION—ITS NECESSITY - 38 

IV SPIRITUAL REGENERATION—ITS NATURE - 51 

V SPIRITUAL REGENERATION—ITS FRUITS - 63 

VI METHODS 71 


CHAPTER I 


THE COLLAPSE OF CIVILISATION 

The world has grown old, civilisation exhausted itself. The 
world is at the cross-roads. Facing a new epoch, the old world 
passing away in violence and collapse. 

1. The World Ruin Foreseen and Foretold. 

Sir Edward Grey, Lord Roseberry, Mr. Benjamin Kidd 
quoted. The socialist agitator. 

2. The World-ruin Described. 

Swift, complete and universal. Mr. A. G. Gardiner 
quoted. Effect on Monarchy and Democracy. Failure of 
Commerce, Labour, Art, Science and Religion. 

3. The Cause of the World-ruin. 

Egoism. The Denial of God. The world a moral order. 

4. Factors of the World-ruin. 

(1) The reliance upon force.. Diplomatic intrigue. Prof. 
Gilbert Murray quoted. The Westminster Gazette. Lord 
Fisher’s plan. 

(2) The false theory of the State. This a reflex of the 
selfishness of human nature. Mr. Harold Begbie on Egoism. 

(3) The Materialism of Capital and Labour. The hard 
peace. Cynicism in politics. 

5. Historical Causes of the World-ruin. 

Darwinism. Aveling quoted. The struggle for existence. 
Haeckel, Neitzsche, Bernhardi, Treitzchke, Bernard Shaw, 
Eugenics. Competition justified. 

The results seen in the World-ruin. Egoism at war with the 
nature of things. 


y Chapter I 

THE COLLAPSE OF CIVILISATION 

Mommsen, speaking of the world which preceded the 
advent of Christianity, declared that “ it was growing 
old, and not even Caesar could make it young again/' 
The same remark, with the alteration of a word, might 
be applied to the modern situation. Only eleven 
years ago, Mr. Benjamin Kidd startled an Oxford 
audience by declaring to them that the world into which 
they had been born was dead. The world has grown 
old, the world we have known has exhausted its 
vitality. We are standing " between two worlds, 
the one dead, the other ”—it doth not yet appear. 
We are witnessing the passing of an order of civilis¬ 
ation, the world is at the cross-roads. We are on the 
verge of a new epoch, the character and value of which 
no man knows, the only thing certain being that it 
will be unlike the one which preceded it. It is the 
hope of all earnest-minded men that the new world 
will be worthier than the old, and, with that end in 
view, schemes, whose name is Legion, are being pro¬ 
pounded. But before we can construct the new age, 
we must understand the cause or causes which led to 
the collapse of the old ; we must discover the secret 
of the failure of that which has ended in smoke and 
flame. The war has been a great agony, but it h^s 


xo 


THE COLLAPSE OF CIVILISATION 


ii 


also been a great revealer. In its lurid light, the 
fissures and cracks in the modem world have been made 
plain. Our civilisation has been an artificial thing, 
it has lacked real coherence, and the war, with all its 
tragedy, has not been so much the cause of its passing 
as the occasion of its demise. It was already bank¬ 
rupt before the war,, senile decay was written over all 
its works ; its collapse came because it was inevitable, 
if not by war, then by some other catastrophe just as 
tragic. The war was but the consummation of its 
own corruption ; it had waxed old, and was ready to 
vanish away. 

Careful observers before the war foresaw and fore¬ 
told the ruin. Sir Edward, now Earl Grey, speaking 
of the expenditure upon armaments in the House of 
Commons on March 29, 1909, said, " Surely the extent 
to which this expenditure has grown really becomes a 
satire and a reflection upon civilisation. Not in our 
generation, perhaps, but if it goes on at the rate at 
which it has recently increased, sooner or later , I believe, 
it^will submerge that civilisation." And Lord Rose- 
berry, speaking a little later in the same year, used 
words of similar import, urging in a phrase now famous, 
that the countries were “ rattling into barbarism." 
“ I do begin," he said, “ to feel uneasy at the outcome 
of it all, and wonder where it will stop, or if it is nearly 
going to bring back Europe into a state of barbarism, 
or whether it will cause a catastrophe in which the 
working men of the world will say, ‘ We will have no 
more of this madness, this foolery, which is grinding 
us to powder \" In the social and economic realm 
this fear of impending collapse has been expressed by 


12 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 


many. Mr. Benjamin Kidd, in his recent book, The 
Science of Power, records the profound horror with 
which he listened to Galton's proposals for the breeding 
of a new race on the basis of Darwinian principles, 
and the conclusion he came to was " that this charac¬ 
teristic science of force could never become the science 
of civilisation, but that as embodied in the West, alike 
in the military state and in the economic struggle, 
it was moving through world-shaking catastrophe to 
irretrievable bankruptcy in history.” The socialist 
agitator, in his desire for a new world, has gone further, 
he has boldly sought to compass the ruin of the order 
now passing. Yet when the collapse came, it was 
with a swiftness which startled all observers, and with 
a completeness and universality which had not even 
been imagined. The world was one in its sin ; it is 
to-day one in its ruin. In vivid language, Mr. A. G. 
Gardiner, the late Editor of The Daily News, described 
the present state of Europe in a special article in that 
journal, June 28, 1919. " Not since the Goths and the 

Vandals broke up the empire that had been founded 
by the Caesars has the Continent presented such a 
spectacle of universal wreckage as it does to-day. The 
artificial structure of civilisation, painfully elaborated 
through a thousand years of military strife and diplo¬ 
matic cunning, has gone like a dream. Hardly a stone 
of it is left standing. Thrones that seemed as enduring 
as the hills have fallen almost as unresistingly as leaves 
in autumn , empires that have existed for centuries 
are broken up into fragments ; everywhere there is 
famine, disruption, revolution, panic and an illimitable 
fear of the future. Humanity is like a city shaken by 


THE COLLAPSE OF CIVILISATION 


13 


an enormous earthquake that has left it without a 
shelter and without a landmark of its former self.” 
The foreboding with which the future is faced is deep¬ 
ened when one considers more closely the things which 
have gone down in the general wreck. Monarchy is 
no longer a word to conjure with, and the whole theory 
of government is in the crucible ; democracy has not 
yet found its feet, the people are a mob, “ as sheep 
having no shepherd.” The war has revealed, too, the 
inadequacy of the bonds which have been deemed 
sufficient for the binding of the race together. Cobden’s 
dream of a world-peace based on commerce has proven 
an illusion; the fierce tides of national feeing broke 
at once all the connections of international trade, 
while the Internationale of Labour was impotent against 
the same forces. Equally impotent were the Arts 
and Sciences—spheres which have hitherto been 
regarded as international in character, and Religion, 
the least sectional of all the interests of mankind, has 
presented the strange spectacle of the members of the 
same faith praying to the same God against one 
another. We have no illusions now as to the extent 
of the catastrophe ; it is the world that is in process 
of dissolution. 

To describe this ruin, however, is not to explain it; 
we must get deeper if we would search out the cause. 
We say “ cause ” rather than “ causes,” because we 
hold, fundamentally, the disease, and the ruin which 
the disease has wrought, have arisen, and can have 
arisen only, from one source, viz. the denial of love as 
the basis of life, and the exaltation of egoism as life’s 
controlling motive. Humanity swings between the 


14 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 


two poles of altruism and egoism ; the one is our light, 
the other is our darkness ; life comes from one, death 
from the other. As we choose between them, so are 
we determining our blessing or our doom. The world 
is a moral order of which God is the Head. It reacts 
upon men as they respond to the opportunities which 
life presents, in blessing as they follow the high ways 
of mercy, faith and justice ; in cataclysm and doom 
as they follow the low ways of materialistic selfishness. 
The Psalmist’s declaration is profoundly true to history 
—“ The wicked shall be cast into hell and all the nations 
which forget God.” The hell of the present hour is 
but the fruit of the God-denying selfishness which has 
dominated the world so long. It must have come sooner 
or later, as inevitably as the abundance of harvest 
follows the sowing of springtime. The moral order 
knows no escape from the law of sowing and reaping. 

A closer analysis of the situation only confirms this 
general statement. The war, it is recognised, has 
come directly out of the selfish ambitions of the leading 
nations of Europe. It would be futile in this enquiry 
to single out any one nation as more guilty than any 
other;* the disease is one which has bitten deeply 
into the life of all. The only arbiter recognised in the 
last resort has been force, and each nation is in the 
position of being accessory to the crime before it was 
committed. Ultimately each nation was bound by 
the same theory, and in like circumstances would have 
acted in the same way. Whenever the interests of 

* Dean Inge recently said “ Now it seems to most of us that 
we were all stark mad together” Christian World Pulpit, August 
3rd, 1922. The whole sermon is a noble plea for a Christian 
solution of our war problems. 


THE COLLAPSE OF CIVILISATION 


15 


one State conflicted with the interests of another, 
there was always the danger of war ; it was the morally 
diseased atmosphere in which international relations 
were carried on which made war practically certain. 
This atmosphere is described with extraordinary 
fidelity by one well qualified to judge. Professor 
Gilbert Murray, describing the condition of European 
international politics in the eight years before the war, 
says that to him and those who think with him “ there 
is something sordid and even odious about the ordinary 
processes of foreign policy. There is a constant sus¬ 
picion of intrigue, a constant assertion of interests, 
a dangerous familiarity with thoughts of force or fraud, 
and a habit of using silken phrases as a cover for very 
brutal facts. Foreign politics are the relations between 
so many bands of outlaws/' He speaks of “ the 
curious mental atmosphere in which our international 
diplomats have to move. There is fear in the air, 
and it is fear that makes men lie/' 1 

This judgment is confirmed by an article in the 
Westminster Gazette for October 31, 1911. Speaking 
of these same diplomats, the journal proceeded to say, 
" We see them pulling wires, stealing marches on each 
other, laying long and crafty plans which almost in¬ 
variably miscarry, and missing obvious events which 
throw all their designs into confusion. And on one 
side or the other there is a perpetual exploiting of the 
inherent loyalty and patriotism of their countries in 
quarrels which are mere combativeness for no purpose. ” z 

1 The Foreign Policy of Sir Edward Grey, by Prof. Gilbert 
Murray, Oxford, Clarendon Press. Quoted by the Rev. Prof. D. S. 
Cairns, D.D., in The Reasonableness of the Christian Faith, p. 208. 

2 Quoted by Mr. Benjamin Kidd, The Science of Power, p. 16. 


16 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 


According to this authority, civilisation in Europe 
seemed to be returning to conditions of primitive 
savagery. 

A still more startling confirmation of this point of 
view has come to light in the publication of Lord 
Fisher’s astonishing book Memories , wherein this 
distinguished Admiral discloses the plan he advocated 
in 1905 to “ Copenhagen ” the German fleet in Kiel 
Harbour after the manner of Nelson, without any 
previous declaration of war. It is admitted that this 
plan became known to the Kaiser ; what does not 
appear to be admitted, however, is the appalling im¬ 
pression such a plan must have had upon the inter¬ 
national situation. The Machiavellianism of the 
proposal almost takes our breath away ; it can only 
merit the sternest censure of all men of goodwill. The 
plea that it would have forestalled the “ inevitable ” 
war cannot be justified in the court of morality, while 
from the point of view of its wisdom, it must be accused 
of bankruptcy, as it probably had a great deal to do 
with precipitating the conflict it sought to eliminate 
or localise. It reveals, moreover, the evil atmosphere 
in which our international policies are discussed, and 
the radically false theory which prevails as to the 
relation of one State to another. When one State 
is regarded as the potential enemy of another, it is 
not difficult to see, provided the supposed " interests ” 
are deemed large enough and the movement suitable, 
that war must arise. It is the pernicious theory of 
the State as an entity in itself which poisons the whole 
international atmosphere and creates a demand for 
war when a clash of interests arises. The thunder 


THE COLLAPSE OF CIVILISATION 


*7 


evoked in the British Press at the beginning of the 
war against the Treitzchkean doctrine of “ the state 
as power/' needs to be directed against all forms of 
national egoism. States are but “ unreal abstractions," 
the temporary grouping together of certain individuals 
who inhabit a particular territory. National egoism 
could have no existence apart from the egoism that is 
common to human nature, it is only the egoism of one 
group of individuals in opposition to another group 
of individuals. All wars are undertaken for the sake 
of gain or from the fear of loss, i.e., for selfish motives. 
Fundamentally, war arises out of the selfishness of 
human nature and the conflict of the modern world 
is but a reflex of the egoistic basis of modern life. Mr. 
Harold Begbie described this with great incisiveness 
in the year before the war. “ Look where you will," 
he asserted, “ It is the spirit of I myself which is par¬ 
amount. Life exists for Me. All the dim aeons 
behind have toiled to produce Me. This brief moment 
in the eternal duration of time is only the opportunity 
for My pleasure and My ease. I care not a jot for 
the ages ahead and the sons of men who shall inherit 
the earth when I am dust beneath their feet. Give 
Me My rights. Stand clear of My way. I want and 
I will have." 1 The same writer returns to the charge 
in an article entitled “ The Egoism of Morality" 
which appeared in The Daily Chronicle, September 
12, 1919. He contends that our unrestrained individ¬ 
ualism is “ consistent with the teaching of Neitzsche, 
and inconsistent with the teaching of Christ," and 
asserts “ that the great majority of Christians in 

1 The Weakest Link , p. 43. 


2 


18 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 


civilised Europe are at this moment governed in their 
conception of morals and politics by much the same 
principle as that which Neitzsche laid down to the 
universal scandal of mankind. . . .We are still 

egoists/’ 

It is this fact which largely explains the chaotic 
conditions which prevail in the political and economic 
spheres of the modern period. Prior to the outbreak 
of war we were face to face with an organised attempt 
to overawe the authority of Parliament by the threat 
of force, it is notorious that the Home Rule question 
brought the people of these islands to the verge of civil 
war. The ballot was to be defeated by the bullet; 
what could not be won or defended by constitutional 
means was to be secured by extra-constitutional means. 
The deplorable tragedy of Ireland is the legacy of this 
ill-starred campaign. The idea of force has worked 
like a poison in the minds of the people of Ireland, 
but the responsibility for all the unhappy episodes, 
culminating in murder, reprisal and now civil war 
between Irishmen themselves should be placed upon 
those who first gave birth to the gospel of force as 
applied to Irish affairs. 

In the industrial world the situation was no different, 
and its results have been similar. The discrepancies 
between the " haves ” and the “ have-nots ” were 
to be done away with by the “ class-war,” the whole 
problem was to be dealt with according to belligerent 
principles. In spite of many well-sounding phrases, 
the attitude of Capital and Labour to each other was 
one of undisguised hostility. Mr. Herbert F. Stead, 

. Warden of the Browning Settlement, was quoted in 


THE COLLAPSE OF CIVILISATION 


19 


The Daily News 1 as saying “ their joy and hope had 
been that the workers were exempt from the curse 
of materialism which had been the moral ruin of the 
upper and middle classes. But old Labour leaders 
had told him that the workers of to-day were too largely 
influenced by the desire to get as much as they could 
and to give as little as they could, and the tragedy 
of it was that they regarded that as happiness/’ The 
long succession of labour troubles since the armistice 
provides a grim commentary on the above statement, 
only one must add that the burden of responsibility 
belongs not to the workers alone. It is human 
nature which is at fault, and neither masters nor 
men have a monopoly of its defects. The problem, at 
the root, is personal, and economic formulae do not 
alter persons. 

Closely allied with this belligerent attitude toward 
one another of different portions of modern society 
is the absence of moral idealism, and in many cases 
the utmost contempt for it. No doubt to some extent 
the peculiar complexion of the political world in Great 
Britain is responsible for the moral paralysis of the 
last few years, but this peculiar political condition 
was first a result before it became a cause. Compromise 
could not have become such a fine art had not many 
of our political leaders waxed cold in their devotion 
to principle. Even so, we were startled when the 
Lord Chancellor openly flouted the Sermon on the 
Mount; it was too reminiscent of M. Clemenceau’s 
jest at President Wilson for talking “ like Jesus 
Christ ” to be pleasant; hitherto we have liked to 
1 September 2, 1919. 


20 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 


believe that we believe in ideals. Yet it is well that 
our illusions should be dispelled. Quite a considerable 
number of our countrymen, we fear, adopt a frankly 
Pagan outlook on life, and share the view that all 
idealism is nonsense. Quite recently a respectable 
journal criticised the fairly moderate views of Lord 
Robert Cecil as being “ too good for human nature’s 
daily food,” “ the kind of confession of faith which we 
all reserve for Sundays and the hours of Service.” We 
need not wonder at the corruption of public and private 
life when the ethical basis of conduct is openly derided. 
Our failures at peace-making are directly due to the 
absence of any spiritual valuation of human affairs. 
The Peace of Versailles, it was recognised, was a hard 
peace ; what was not recognised was that it would 
inevitably produce a hard world. It is the war mind 
which has effectually paralysed all attempts at recon¬ 
ciliation. The terms of Versailles were not peace 
terms, but war terms, the dictation of the victors to 
the vanquished. In spite of the warnings of history, 
peace was made in the spirit of war—with the same 
effect, the next war is already envisaged. Succeeding 
conferences have been vitiated by the same atmos¬ 
phere, even that at Washington was rendered largely 
nugatory by the suspicion that the ships surrendered 
were sacrificed because in the next war they would 
be already superseded. Disarmament remains a 
dream, because the leading nations of Europe are not 
prepared to disarm their minds. 

We have tried to indicate, so far, things as they are, 
but it seems necessary to enquire how this prevailing 
egoism has come to exist. Selfishness is no new thing 


THE COLLAPSE OF CIVILISATION 


21 


in human nature, yet it seems organised now in a way 
it has not been since the days of the Roman Empire. 
It is the secularisation of life which marks off this age 
from the ages which preceded it, and which gives it 
a characteristically pagan tone. The standards of 
value are made in the money-market. Mammon is 
the God of our time. Our civilisation is frankly self- 
regarding in its motives. 

How are we to account for this ? No doubt many 
causes have contributed to this frankly egoistic basis, 
but we feel that the present situation is largely the 
result of the drift which set in with the acceptance 
of the Darwinian hypothesis of the struggle for existence 
as the main factor in evolution. By this theory egoism 
was given a place in the scheme of nature which effect¬ 
ually precluded all notions of sacrifice and service, 
and in the mouths of its professors a frankly utilitarian 
morality was preached. Life was for the strong ; the 
w r eak must be swept away. “ Every living being is 
an Ishmael. Its hand is against all others. The 
hands of all others are against it. . . . Vae Victis, 

woe to the conquered, is the cry of the world/’ 1 Not 
that Darwin himself necessarily made these applications 
as later Darwinians have done ; indeed there is evidence 
so far as Darwin himself is concerned, to the contrary. 
But in the hands of later Darwinians, the hypothesis 
has become determinative of their world-view, and 
everything has to bow down to it. Thus Haeckel 
abolishes the dualism between egoism and altruism, 
and asserts their " equivalence.” 2 All morality he 

1 The Students’ Darwin, by the late Dr. Edward Aveling. 

2 The Riddle of the Universe, p. 124. 


22 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 

educes out of “iron laws.” Nietzsche carried the 
matter further in proclaiming a ruthless individualism. 
He rejects Christ as " decadent,” and preaches a 
“ master-morality ” instead of the gentleness of Christ¬ 
ianity which he terms “ slave-morality.” The full 
consequence of this ruthlessness is seen in Bernhardi s 
doctrine of “ the biological necessity of war, and 
Treitzchke’s deification of “ the State as power,” which 
worked out in practice to the militarisation of modern 
Germany. But the Nietzscheans are not all on the 
Continent; in this country a view of life is held which 
is not essentially different. Mr. Bernard Shaw has 
preached “ the Super-man ” which is to be attained 
by the aid of Eugenics—the bearing of which may be 
appreciated from the place given to competition as the 
sole arbiter of fitness. According to this new science, 
the conception of altruism as an evolutionary force in 
civilisation is “ biologically false,” the only instinct 
which is sufficiently universal to supply the motive 
for exertion in civilisation is the desire to accumulate 
property in the competitive struggle . 1 It is this frankly 
self-regarding point of view which has gradually per¬ 
meated all ranks of Society, and which to-day dominates 
all our relations, international, national, industrial and 
social. Douglas Jerrold had reason for his biting 
saying “ We are all brothers. Yes, Cains and Abels.” 
Antagonism, not altruism, is the basis of our civilisation. 
Competition is the weary road by which humanity has 
chosen to march to its destiny. 

Now, it is not difficult to see that the end of such 

1 See William Bateson's Biological Fact and the Structure of 
Society, quoted by Benjamin Kidd, The Science of Power, p. 85. 


1 


THE COLLAPSE OF CIVILISATION 


23 


a lorry scheme of things must be collapse. It is the 
old atomic theory coming into the realm of human 
life and conduct, the law of the jungle and not the law 
of the home. Each individual becomes a beast of 
prey, and his personal advantage depends upon his 
superior strength or cunning. It is true that these 
preying instincts become modified by adherence to a 
particular group, it may be the family, the Church or 
some other Society, and within these groups a fair level 
of communal life may be realised for a time, but the 
egoism of the individual becomes massed into a group 
egoism, and thereby intensified (as in the case of war 
between different States). In the desert of human 
life, man constructs an oasis for himself and his friends, 
but he accentuates the desert by acts of plunder against 
those who are not of his group. The law of the desert 
still obtains to the disintegration finally of each group. 
Living for itself, the group ultimately dies ; group- 
selfishness contains the seeds of its own death. It is 
at war with the nature of things, and the nature of 
things reacts upon it to its own destruction. 

In this analysis of modern civilisation, we have an 
explanation of the chaos of the modern world. Man 
has flung himself away from the true centre of his life, 
he has organised his existence in defiance of the Divine 
order. In effect, he has challenged the Almighty to 
mortal combat. And the issue reveals the deplorable 
failure he has wrought. “ Be not deceived, God is 
not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth that shall 
he also reap/' 


CHAPTER II 


THE DIVINE BASIS OF CIVILISATION 

Altruism or Love the ideal. 

1. The Ideal Universal. 

Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Hillel, The Stoics. 

2. The Ideal Fulfilled in Christianity. 

God as the source of love. The Fatherhood of God and the 
Brotherhood of man. The failure of earlier systems due to 
lack of sufficient motive. Christ realises ideal through the 
Revelation of God and His own sacrifice. 

3. The Ideal Justified. 

(1) By Science. The mechanical theory routed. The 
world a spiritual world. Factors in Evolution Ethical. 
Thomson and Geddes. Kropotkin, etc. 

(2) In Literature. Negatively, by Shakespeare. Posi¬ 
tively, by Dante, Browning, Tennyson, Francis Thompson. 

(3) In Philosophy. Modern concept of personality involves 
love. Illingworth quoted. 

(4) In History. The Christian Home. Family affection. 

Appeal to love as the greatest thing in the world. 


Chapter II 


THE DIVINE BASIS OF CIVILISATION 

We have seen so far that the bane of our so-called 
civilisation is egoism, the erection by man of the self- 
regarding instincts as the first law of life. Confronting 
this, however, is the opposite ideal of altruism, which 
has never been wholly absent from our world, though 
unhappily never yet dominant in it. In all ages love 
has been honoured as the true foundation of human 
life, and poets and philosophers have sought to give 
it expression in their teaching. Thus Buddha taught 
a doctrine of charity which in many respects anticipates 
the Christian doctrine. “ Liberality, courtesy, kind¬ 
liness and unselfishness," he said, “ these are to the 
world what the linchpin is to the rolling chariot "—they 
keep the world in its course, as the linchpin does the 
chariot wheel, and prevents its inhabitants from being 
hurled headlong to destruction. Many of the sayings 
handed down from Confucius seem instinct with more 
modern ideas, and in his characteristic work “ Recip¬ 
rocity/' he comes near to Christianity. Socrates 
is credited with a negative form of the Golden Rule, 
while Hillel, the Jewish Rabbi, said, “ What is hateful 
to thyself, do not to thy neighbour. This is the whole 
law, the rest is commentary." The Stoic morality 


25 


26 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 


conceived a state where “ there shall be one life and 
one world, as one flock led by a common law.” 1 Marcus 
Aurelius thought of each man as a citizen of the world, 
and that “ we are made for co-operation, like the feet, 
the hands, the eyelids, the upper and the lower rows 
of teeth,” “ for, what is not good for the swarm is not 
good for the bee ”—a doctrine which involves altruism 
of the highest kind. We see in these ideas a reaching 
forth toward the conception of Love as the basis of 
human society. But in Christianity, this conception 
is crowned and glorified ; it is the raison d’etre of 
existence, the first and the last, the greatest thing in 
the world, because the greatest thing in God, for “ God 
is Love.” 3 Prior to Christ, the sentiment of love lacked 
any great operative power because it lacked any real 
ground in the nature of things. Civilisation went on 
its self-regarding way heedless of the select souls who 
had caught a glimmer of the diviner side of existence. 
Christ, however, by His revelation of God as Love, 
made religion social and brotherhood real, love to God 
and love to man became the characteristic expression 
of the Christian life. Herein lies the great achieve¬ 
ment of Christianity, alike in the realm of doctrine and 
of life ; it grounds its notion of the ideal relation of 
man to man in the nature of God. The Brotherhood 
of Man is the corollary of the Fatherhood of God. 
The futility of other ethical systems and of the many 
admirable maxims of noble men arises from the fact 
that they lack any constraining motive, or any motive 
sufficient for the purpose in view ; they remain cold 

1 Zeno. 

2 i John iv. 8, 16. 


THE DIVINE BASIS OF CIVILISATION 


2 7 


and unpractical even when they impress us with their 
beauty and truth. Christianity broke down the selfish¬ 
ness of human nature by revealing a God in Whose 
Heart the Cross was a perpetual experience ; it was 
the story of a love which suffered in order to save, which 
created the religion of redemption. It is this which 
the New Testament reveals and which constitutes its 
uniqueness for morality. Christ is the inspiration 
of the Christian life, because He loves us with a 
love which will not let us go. This is not always per¬ 
ceived, although passages which proclaim it are abund¬ 
ant. “ We love, because He first loved us.” 1 “ Walk 

in Love, as Christ also hath loved us.” 2 “ A new 

commandment I give unto you, that ye love one 
another ; as I have loved you, that ye also love one 
another.” " This is my Commandment, that ye love 
one another, as I have loved you. ”3 It is this which 
makes possible in practice the twofold command which 
our Lord described as summing up “ the law and the 
prophets,” viz. the love of God and the love of man.4 
The law for earth and the law of heaven are one—it 
is Love. 

Now, this has been denied us in modern times, and 
the denial has sought the sanctions of science. For 
a time it seemed to have obtained them. The Darwin¬ 
ian theory of “ the Struggle for Existence ” really 
harked back to the atomic theory of Democritus and 
found in strife the nature of all things. The cosmic 

1 i John iv. ig. R.V. 

2 Eph. v. 2. 

3 John xiii. 34, xv. 12. 

4 Matt. xxii. 36-40. 


28 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 


process was a grim unending struggle in which strength 
was the sole arbiter of victory, the weak were merci¬ 
lessly eliminated that the strong might rule. Moreover, 
nature came to be conceived as a closed system, deter¬ 
mined and regular, the subject alone of mechanical 
and chemical laws, from which all thought of purpose 
or design was ruled out. Darwin's letters reveal the 
agony of mind he felt at his inability to see any purpose 
in the process, while his successors bluntly deny that 
any purpose exists at all. During the last fifty or 
sixty years a stream of literature has appeared in which 
the whole of our lives has been construed from the 
standpoint of materialistic evolution, and it was argued 
that the standpoint of religion was untenable. All 
this had its inevitable effect; in the popular mind the 
conflict of religion with science was decided against 
religion, and the special claims of Christianity as 
providing the law of life in love were dishonoured. 
Materialistic philosophy and science reinforced the 
selfish tendencies of human nature, and brought about 
a state of things little distinguished from paganism. 
But a new orientation is taking place in the ranks of 
science, the somewhat hasty generalisations of the 
past have been investigated with a closer scrutiny, 
and the materialistic assumptions are being returned 
as “ not proven." In many cases the investigators 
go further, and charge the assumptions which were 
made with falsehood, the mechanical conceptions 
having broken down, the facts disclosing elements 
which no mechanical theory can explain. In short, 
it is now declared that “ Personality is the great central 
fact of the Universe. This world, with all that lies 


THE DIVINE BASIS OF CIVILISATION 


29 


within it, is a spiritual world.” 1 This point of view 
is being increasingly held by a host of writers—of whom 
Sir Oliver Lodge and Professor J. Arthur Thomson 
in this country are leading representatives, while on 
the Continent men like Bergson and Eucken take a 
similar view. In fact, the mechanical theory of 
causation has been routed all along the line ; it repre¬ 
sents a stage of scientific ignorance, not knowledge. 

More germane, however, to our present point, is 
the fact that the factors of the evolutionary process 
are spoken of in ethical terms, or as providing a basis 
for ethical life. The conception of altruism in nature 
never indeed wanted for advocates even when Dar¬ 
winism was in the ascendant, but now something like 
a consensus of opinion exists as to the benevolent 
purpose of the evolutionary process. “ We see,” 
say Thomson and Geddes, in their work on The Evolu¬ 
tion of Sex, “ that it is possible to interpret the ideals 
of ethical progress, through love and sociality, co¬ 
operation and sacrifice, not as mere utopias contradicted 
by experience, but as the highest expressions of the 
central evolutionary process of the natural world.” 
Confirmation of these views may be found in the writings 
of Mr. Benjamin Kidd, Kropotkin, Henry Drummond, 
etc. We see then that there is no valid objection 
from the standpoint of science against interpreting 
Love as the final principle of the Universe. Sociality 
is embedded deep in the nature of things, the struggle 
for life is controlled by the Struggle for the Life of 
Others. The significance of this for human life is 
enormous ; it confirms our deepest instincts and our 
1 J. S. Haldane, Mechanism, Life and Personality, p. 139. 


30 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 


highest aspirations. Love is the only power which can 
create an ordered and progressive civilisation. Here 
experience may give to us a negative confirmation of 
this thesis. The present anarchy of civilisation at 
least reveals the impossibility of progress along the 
lines of the egoistic, self-regarding methods which have 
prevailed too long. Selfishness spells disintegration, 
love only is consolidating. The Supermen have brought 
society to its dissolution. This, of course, is no new 
phenomenon, it has been the theme of dramatists of 
all ages. To name one who stands alone, “ outtopping 
knowledge," it is a view which repeatedly finds 
expression in Shakespeare. 

Take but degree away, untune that string. 

And hark, what discord follows ! 

Force should be right; or, rather right and wrong, 
Between whose endless jar justice resides, 

Should lose their names, and so shall justice too. 

Then everything includes itself in power. 

Power into will, will into appetite, 

And appetite an universal wolf, 

So doubly seconded will and power, 

Must make perforce an universal prey, 

And last, eat up himself . 1 

Mr. Bradley, than whom no more discerning or morally 
elevating critic may be found, finds Shakespeare's 
" tragic view to consist in a perception of a moral 
order which is akin to good and alien from evil." 

Evil exhibits itself everywhere as something neg¬ 
ative, barren, weakening, destructive, a principle of 

1 Troilus and Cressida, Act I., Sc. 3. 


THE DIVINE BASIS OF CIVILISATION 31 

death. It isolates, disunites and tends to annihilate 
not only its opposite but itself/’ and he concludes that 
“ the calamity arises from collision, not with a fate 
or blank power, but with a moral power,” and he finely 
sums up the matter in the words, “ We remain confronted 
with the inexplicable fact .... of a world 
travailing for perfection, but bringing to birth, together 
with glorious good, an evil, which it is able to overcome 
only by self-torture and self-waste.” 1 It is true that 
this view does not point the way to the “ perfection ” 
for which the world is in travail, but it implies it, or 
at any rate it does not inhibit it. For this, the positive 
view, we turn to other writers, the great poets, like 
Dante, Tennyson and Browning, who find their solution 
of the evil of the world in 

“ The Love which moves the sun and the other stars .” 2 

Browning’s optimism found its source in the conviction 
that Love was the ultimate principle of the Universe, 
victorious in all realms, subduing all things unto itself 
and making them work together for good. 

There is no good of life but love—but love ! 

What else looks good, is some shade flung from love, 
Love gilds it, gives it worth . 3 

He cannot think that this love can exist on earth 
and not in heaven, something within him makes such 
a supposition impossible. 

For the living worm within its clod 
Were diviner than a loveless God 
Amid his worlds, I will dare to say. 

1 Shakespearean Tragedy, pp. 37-8-9. 

2 Dante, “ Paradiso,” XXXIII. 

3 “In a Balcony.” 


32 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 

Man's power of loving is God’s gift; God is Himself 
the source and fulness of love, and will so fill infinitude 
with His love that the creature will have no spot to 
stand in. 

This world’s no blot for us. 

Nor blank; it means intensely and it means good . 1 

And so, he reports of the creation, “ all’s love, yet 
all’s law.” Quotation is almost superfluous, for the 
poet was so saturated with this point of view that much 
of his poetry is simply a variation on this one theme. 
Love is the very nature of things, beginning, middle and 
end, and all the struggle and suffering of life are but 
incidents in the working out of love’s purpose. Hence 
the poet’s optimism. 

My own hope is, a sun will pierce 

The thickest cloud earth ever stretched ; 

That, after Last, returns to First, 

Though a wide compass round be fetched : 

That what began best, can’t end worst 
Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst . 2 

Tennyson’s solution of the problem of life was essen¬ 
tially the same, though he found it along the path of 
personal sorrow, as Browning did not. The argument 
of “In Memoriam ” is that Love is of such a nature 
that it persists through eternity ; it is this alone which 
gives meaning and value to life and made it possible 
for him to love and commune with his dead friend, 
who was not dead, but alive in God. The poem records 
how the poet’s sorrow passed from being merely 
individual into a universal sympathy with all mankind, 

1 “ Fra Lippo Lippi.” 

3 “Apparent Failures.” 


THE DIVINE BASIS OF CIVILISATION 


33 


and how, finally, he became convinced that love was 
Lord and King, and that the victory over pain and sin 
was with 

That God, Who ever lives and loves. 

One God, one law, one element 
And one far-off, divine event 

To which the whole creation moves. 

Francis Thompson, alone of later poets, utters the same 
note with anything like the wealth of inspiration of the 
master-singers, “The Hound of Heaven ” describing 
with opulent phrase and startling imagery the all- 
pitying pursuit of the Divine Love and the vain efforts 
of man to elude that “ Tremendous Lover/' 

" Halts by me that footfall : 

Is my gloom, after all 

Shade of His Hand, outstretched caressingly ? 

Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest 

I am He Whom Thou seekest! 

Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.” 

From another quarter comes confirmation of the 
same idea. “ Personality ” from the modem stand¬ 
point, involves a society, as it is the resultant of various 
relationships, and a society is impossible without love 
as its immanent law. “ In one degree or another, in 
one fashion or another, all men are susceptible of love. 
And if we analyse our personality we see how inevit¬ 
ably this is so. For while on the one hand a person is 
a self, an independent centre of being, on the other he 
is essentially dependent for his development, his 
realisation, his life, upon other persons who are not 
himself. Dependence is as fundamental a characteristic 


3 


34 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 

of personality as self-identity. A person is, by 
his very mark and constitution, a social being/' 1 We 
are thus driven once more to the conviction that love 
is the basic law of human life, respect for which creates 
a harmony out of the separate elements, while the non¬ 
recognition of this law inevitably leads to violence and 
collapse. 

Thus far, however, we have been proceeding in the 
realm of idea and ideal; we have not brought this 
principle to the test of experience. Can we find any 
sphere in which this law has operated and so test its 
working in history ? It is necessary to ask this 
question, because it may be argued that an idea which 
has never become incarnate in actual experience is too 
visionary, too problematical a thing to appeal to amid 
the urgency of the modern problem. This contention 
is not fatal, but the appeal to fact enormously strengthens 
the argument. Happily there is one sphere in which 
the Christian law has exercised sway, and illustrates 
in triumphant fashion the tremendous potency for good 
of this ideal once it is allowed to operate. We see 
not yet all things subjected to this law, but in the 
Christian family we behold its emancipating and elevating 
effects in a convincing degree. “ The teaching 
of Jesus, so slightly accepted in many ways of life, 
has actually taken firm root in the soil of the family/' 2 
It is in the Christian home, with its duty of self¬ 
subordination, that the ideal of Jesus has been best 
realised. Here selfishness is held in restraint, and the 
welfare of the whole made the governing consideration, 

1 Illingworth, Reason and Revelation, p. 91. 

2 Peabody, Jesus Christ and the Social Question, Ch. 3. 


THE DIVINE BASIS OF CIVILISATION 35 

here “ the individual is set at birth in a relation 
of altruistic interest,” here “ self-surrender becomes 
the law of life.” 1 To this, the stability and happiness 
of the modem family are due ; here the ethic of Jesus 
has received historical justification. We are not to 
be understood as maintaining that there are no homes 
which are the reverse of this lovely harmony, alas ! 
it is only too true that many approximate to the animal, 
nevertheless, the modern home in its best aspects is 
the creation of Christianity. “ Family affection in 
some form is the almost indispensable root of 
Christianity.” 2 The writers quoted use the meta¬ 
phor root and soil in a reverse way, but the argument 
is essentially the same. The conquest of Christianity, 
notwithstanding its fluctuations, has abode through¬ 
out the centuries in the Christian home. 

Now, it is in the extension of the family affections 
that there lies any hope in the modern situation. The 
family is Christ’s model for all human relations, and it 
is through the discovery of the common relationships 
of mankind that there may arise any enthusiasm for 
humanity. God is the Father of all men and all men 
are His children. The brotherhood of the race rests 
upon a Divine heredity. If this truth could be 
projected into the consciousness of mankind with the 
force it deserves, it would produce a social revolution 
of unheard-of magnitude. In this alone lies the hope 
of the reconstruction of the world. 

Finally, we appeal to Love as the reconstructing 
principle of the future, because it has within it the 

1 Peabody, Jesus Christ and the Social Question, Ch. 3. 

2 Seeley, Ecce Homo, p. 74. 


36 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 

secret of victory. The New Testament reveals Love 
as a power, and, because of it, looks forward to the 
conquest of the world. No-one who has pondered 
deeply these writings can fail to have noticed the sublime 
confidence of the early Church, as with youthful abandon 
it flung itself against the vices of the Roman world. 
They present a spectacle of the Church far different 
from the timid organisation of to-day—although numer¬ 
ically it was much smaller—a Church intoxicated 
with the idea of victory, because it was sure of its 
Leader. Especially the Johannine writings present 
this view of a Society which ideally had overcome the 
world. “ This is the victory, which overcometh the 
world, even our Faith.” 1 It could not dream of defeat, 
because it was the vehicle of a Victorious Love—nay, 
of the Lord of Love, who was dead, but Who became 
alive again, and Who liveth and reigneth for ever and 
ever. And its dream became an actuality, its faith 
blossomed into fact. Lecky the historian, being witness 
the Church conquered. Can this conquest be repeated ? 
We believe it can. Victory will come to the Church 
to-day just as it did in its early days when it is prepared 
to practise the love which “ beareth all things, believeth 
all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things,” for 
this love is “ the greatest thing in the world ”—the 
Love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 


1 i John v. 14, 


CHAPTER III 


SPIRITUAL REGENERATION—ITS NECESSITY 

Selfishness and Love personal states. Hence the need of new 
persons. The remedy is spiritual regeneration. This necessity 
seen from 

•» 

1. The Failure of Externalism. 

Education and Social Reform inadequate. Morley and Mrs. 
Besant quoted. The confession of Social reformers G. N. 
Barnes, Geo. Lansbury, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb, Mr. 
H. G. Wells, etc. 

2. The Demand of Christianity. 

“ For Jesus, the individual is first.” Emphasis upon 
Character and inward cleaning. Sin the obstacle. Herbert 
Spencer and Browning. Morley on Emerson. 

3. The Pessimism of Naturalism. 

Mr. Cotter Morrison. The issue between Naturalism and 
Supernaturalism. Naturalism leads to despair. Prof. J. R. 
Seeley quoted. Eucken’s “ Either—Or.” Sir R. K. Wilson's 
admission re Humanism. 

4. The Illusion of the Ideal of Progress. 

Progress not inevitable. Dean Inge quoted. 

General Smuts on the League of Nations. The need of a new 
heart. Lord Bryce. The Spirit of God the only hope. 


Chapter III 


SPIRITUAL REGENERATION—ITS NECESSITY 

In our analysis of the failure of modem civilisation, 
we found the cause to reside in egoism or selfishness, 
and the remedy we proposed was altruism or love. 
Now, egoism and altruism, as applied to human affairs, 
are personal states ; they issue in, and have no meaning 
apart from, the acts of persons. These acts belong to 
free beings who are capable of modifying their course 
of action in one direction or another. Man is therefore 
responsible for the kind of influence he exerts, it is 
the fact of choice, or self-determination which con¬ 
stitutes him a human being. Apart from this, he would 
be something less. This fact, however, once it is per¬ 
ceived, also determines the nature of the remedy ; 
personality is a governing fact all through. The remedy 
must be as personal as the disease ; the world can only 
be reconstructed through a reconstruction of person¬ 
ality. This is true whether we discuss the problem 
of the social order or the larger one of the international 
system ; behind both, ultimately, lies the character 
of the individual. The world is wrong because the 
individuals which compose it are wrong. And the 
individuals are wrong because very largely they have 
forgotten—or else they deliberately ignore—the fact 


33 


SPIRITUAL REGENERATION—ITS NECESSITY 39 

that the world is an organism, the constituents of which 
are individuals like themselves. It is this impersonal 
and abstract way of looking at the problem which 
befogs all our thinking, and hides the solution from 
us; if we once construed the world through personality 
we should be on the way to a revolution in all our 
relationships. It is this which lies at the root of the 
industrial trouble, it is too much a matter of wages 
and profits. 

“ Things are in the saddle and ride mankind." We 
hear too much about the social “ system," not enough 
of the persons responsible for it. “ Change the system " 
it is said, “ and all will be well." And so we are 
deluged with programmes and legislation, and we go 
from one morass to another. One experiment succeeds 
another, sometimes with bewildering speed, and still 
the cry of discontent is heard in the land. 

The same kind of thing meets us in the International 
situation. A totally false view of the relation of one 
State to another prevails, and the State itself is given 
a quasi-personality, as if it existed apart from the 
people living in any one country. War arises because 
the interests of one State are regarded as inimical to 
the interests of another; the personal factor hardly 
ever enters into it. Before the war there was no per¬ 
sonal hatred between the Germans and ourselves, apart 
from a few individuals there is no hatred now. And 
yet the whole future is dark because of this national 
egoism which insists upon the rivalry between States 
as involving the ruin or subjection of one of them. 
These two points are selected because they are the 
crucial evils of the moment; they illustrate the 


40 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 


radical defects of the external way of viewing human 
life. 

What then is the remedy ? A new valuation of life 
and an attempt to see that the root problem is personal. 
Change the relations between persons and the evils 
complained of will tend to disappear ; make personality 
the standard of value, and all other things will follow. 
The first needisnot the reorganisation of any “system/' 
but the regeneration of man. First, produce the new 
man, and the new world will follow. But this state¬ 
ment carries with it a philosophy of human nature 
violently opposed to that which has hitherto governed 
the world. Mankind, even in Christendom, takes 
a somewhat roseate view of human nature. Lord 
Morley says that “ the central moral doctrine of the 
French Revolution was that human nature is good, 
and that the evil in the world is the result of bad 
education and bad institutions/' 1 To this view men 
have clung with pathetic tenacity, and much noble 
effort has been spent to banish ignorance and alter 
institutions. Thus Mrs. Besant, in her Autobiography , 
published some years ago, asks, " Whence comes sin ? ” 
and answers her own question in the words, “ Evil 
comes from ignorance, ignorance of physical and moral 
facts, primarily from ignorance of physical order. . . . 
The root of all is poverty and ignorance. Educate 
the children, and give them fair wage for fair work in 
their maturity, and crime will gradually diminish 
and ultimately disappear. Make the circumstances 
good and the results will be good/' Whether Mrs. 
Besant still holds to these views we cannot say, but 

1 Diderot, Vol. I., p. 5. 


SPIRITUAL REGENERATION—ITS NECESSITY 41 

they state with boldness and clearness the point of 
view of the average social reformer. It is the attempt 
to find in things the cure for what resides in persons. 
And the failure of all such schemes hitherto is a demon¬ 
stration that the method is essentially wrong. This 
conclusion need not lead us to withhold our admiration 
from the social reformer, or to refrain from supporting 
plans for the social betterment of our fellows where 
these are wisely conceived, but it is necessary to see 
how little all social schemes by themselves can do. 
The fact, notwithstanding all the social legislation on 
the subject, that the social problem recurs with increased 
intensity is sufficient proof that all merely mechanical 
and external schemes lack something which will make 
them work. They lack the most important element— 
man. They ignore human nature. They depend 
upon too abstract a view of human affairs ; as in the 
rationalist view of the world, man is left out, it is the 
play Hamlet without Hamlet himself. 

There are signs, however, that many social reformers 
are finding the ineffectiveness of merely materialistic 
or economic formulas, and they confess their helpless¬ 
ness in face of so gigantic a problem. A Labour leader 
was reported recently to have said “ Better conditions 
of life, humaner conditions of labour, greater rewards 
for the toilers—these are our immediate demands. But 
we want something more. We are in need of a Gospel, 
and those of us who address Labour meetings are very 
conscious of our need.” Mr. G. N. Barnes, M.P., in 
September last, 1 at the Browning Hall, Walworth, con¬ 
tended that the Labour problem “ was an educational 
1 1919 


42 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 

and religious question, a question of man’s proper 
place as man, and not merely as a wage-earner.” 
At this conference an agreement was drawn up 
by the representatives present, giving a summary 
of the religious characteristics of the Labour 
Movement—as found in all lands and in all 
varieties of creed, one item of which was " An un¬ 
quenchable faith in the future, a certainty—based not 
upon experience—of the coming of a higher and better 
social order, a conviction rooted in a sphere above and 
beyond the material sphere,” and this Faith, for 
Christian minds, was “ expressed in the Fatherhood 
of God and the consequent Brotherhood of Man,” 
“ the ethical Sovereignty of Jesus Christ,” and " the 
continual guidance upward of the same Spirit.” 
Mr. George Lansbury, at the recent Church Congress 
at Leicester, pleaded that “ if the thing they called 
civilisation was to be saved, religion and labour must 
join hands in a great effort to put into practice the 
principles laid down in the Sermon on the Mount.” 
Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb called Socialism " a change 
of heart in an article in the New Statesman, 19 
April, 1913, and Mr. H. G. Wells pleaded the necessity 
of “ a change of heart and mind ”* and “ not merely 
a change in conditions and institutions.” Mr. Phillip 
Snowden confessed that social regeneration would be 
accomplished, not by a revolution, but by a co-oper¬ 
ation of “ men and women of all classes, whose moral 
senses have been developed.”* Repeatedly it is said 
in the Labour Press that the movement is not merely 

1 In the Comet’s Tail, p. 303. 

2 Christian Commonwealth, 10th September, 1911. 


SPIRITUAL REGENERATION—ITS NECESSITY 43 

economic, but also spiritual, and the charge of 
materialism is being hotly resented. In all this there is 
evidence that the Labour Movement is seeking, if not 
finding, its soul, it is discovering, or at any rate, the 
finer spirits in it are discovering, the inadequacy of 
merely material formulas. Yet there is very 
little recognition that the crux of the matter is personal 
and spiritual; the almost invariable view is that the 
economic system acts as a kind of prison which prevents 
the exercise of man’s nobler capacities, the redemption 
of the individual waits upon the redemption of his 
circumstances. Far otherwise is it in the Christian 
view. For Jesus, the individual is first. So far from 
being the case that character depends upon circum¬ 
stances, it is the complete opposite which is stated, 
circumstances depend upon character—make the tree 
good and the fruit will be good also. 1 It is an inward 
change Jesus insists upon, a repentance in the sense 
of iieravoia, a change of mind, a birth from above. 
“ Cleanse first the inside of the cup and of the platter. ” 2 
This view looks out at us from almost every page of the 
Gospel; it is the characteristic view of Jesus, it is His 
Gospel. The reason for this is that there is something 
in the human heart called sin. Jesus did not hesitate 
to brand the human heart as corrupt. “ That which 
proceedeth out of the man, that defileth man. For from 
within, out of the heart of man, evil thoughts proceed,” 
etc.3 There is such a thing as the bad heart. Here 
lies the cause of the failure of all external means of 
reforming society ; the root evil is spiritual. “ There 

1 Cp. Matt. xii. 33. 2 Matt, xxiii. 26. 

3 Mark vii. 21, R.V. 


44 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 


is no political alchemy ” said Mr. Herbert Spencer, 
" by which you can get golden conduct out of leaden 
instincts.” 1 Here too, Browning found conviction 
as to the truth of Christianity. 

’Tis the faith that launched point-blank her dart 

At the head of a lie. Taught original sin 

The corruption of man’s heart. 2 

Even Lord Morley gravely rebuked Emerson, because 
he made so little of” that horrid burden and impediment 
on the soul which the Churches call sin, and which, by 
whatever name we call it, is a very real catastrophe 
in the moral nature of man .”3 This is the rock of 
stumbling of all merely external schemes ; it is the 
fact of sin which makes an inward change necessary. 

The pessimism which many social reformers manifest 
when they fairly face the fact of sin reinforces this 
position. “ There is no remedy for a bad heart and 
no substitute for a good one ” declared Mr. Cotter 
Morrison. Mr. Collier, of Manchester, reports a well- 
known and earnest social reformer saying to him, 

" It is no use attempting to deal with certain portions 
of the community. They are irredeemable. It is 
waste of time, strength and money.” Taxed by the 
Rev. Samuel Chadwick with the question, “ What 
are you going to do with the drunkard, the moral 
waster ? ” a socialist leader replied, “ Well I leave them 
to you.” “ Why to me?” asked the Minister. 

" Well >” answered the man, " because I am free to 
confess that if there is any hope for such men, it lies 

1 Quoted, Peabody, Jesus Christ and the Social Question. 

2 “ Gold Hair.” 

3 Essay on Emerson, Miscellanies, Vol. I. 


SPIRITUAL REGENERATION—ITS NECESSITY 45 

in the Gospel which you preach/’ Here is the truth 
confessed. The task impossible to social reform, 
the Gospel attempts and achieves. “ Ye must be born 
again,” says Jesus, and the records of the Christian 
Church are full of twice-born men. Yet the grounds 
of the pessimism, and likewise of the optimism in either 
case must be faced. All social reform is this-worldly 
in its reference ; its horizon is bounded by the world 
of sense-experience, it is of the earth earthy, while 
Christianity—with its offer of a new life, eternal life— 
is supernatural; it comes out of Heaven from God. 
Here the battle is joined, the issue is between Super¬ 
naturalism and Naturalism, and for many this issue 
means Supernaturalism or despair. Thus Professor 
J. R. Seely confessed many years ago, in the summing 
up of his book Natural Religion , “ When the super¬ 
natural does not come in to overwhelm the natural 
and turn life upside down .... Pessimism 
raises its head .... A moral paralysis creeps 
over us . . . . For a while we comfort ourselves 

with the notion of self-sacrifice ; we say, what matter 
if I pass, let me think of others ! But the other has 
become contemptible no less than the self. The 
affections die of their own conscious feebleness and 
bootlessness.” 1 Now, Eucken sounds the same warning 
in his “ Either-or ” philosophy. " To every thinking 
man the great alternative presents itself, the Either- 
or. Either there is something older and higher than 
this purely humanistic culture or life ceases to have 
any meaning or value.” 2 And again, “ We may dismiss 

1 pp. 261-2. 

* The Meaning and Value of Life, p. 140. 


46 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 

all hope of giving life meaning and value by a mere 
further development of this purely humanistic culture. 
. . . Thus to-day we hear a great deal of the super¬ 

human and the superman, but for all the genuine 
longing such a movement may embody it cannot but 
degenerate into mere idle words if this superman be 
sought within the world of sense-experience. . . . 

For man is far too closely bound by the fetters of his 
nature and his destiny to be renewed in life and being 
by the mere magic of a word. Thus he must either 
break with the realistic culture or renounce all hope 
of inwardly raising humanity and realising the meaning 
of life. Only a shallow and trivial philosophy can dream 
any third course possible/' 1 A practical demonstration 
of this position may be found in the Hibbert Journal . 2 
In an article entitled “ Humanism, An Experiment 
in Religion/' written from the standpoint of one “ less 
and less able to affirm with any confidence the existence 
of any supreme mind behind the visible universe," 
Sir Roland K. Wilson discusses the effect of such a 
position on conduct. Written without any dogmatism, 
the article commands sympathy, but the conclusions 
are both dreary and instructive. “ Some changes in 
our estimate of moral values " he regards as inevit¬ 
able, and he illustrates wdiat he means by affirming 
that " the highest practicable aim is not self-realisation, 
but self-expression/' “ Self-realisation, so far as 
distinguishable from self-expression, becomes rather 
ridiculous as a life-aim, if the self must be annihilated 
within a few decades, and may disappear at any 

1 The Meaning and Value of Life, p. 157. 

2 October, 1919. 


SPIRITUAL REGENERATION—ITS NECESSITY 47 

moment/' Suicide is to be permitted. “ A Humanist 
Society will be slow to pronounce the suicide as such, 
either lunatic or criminal " ; Divorce, " will certainly 
not be determined by reported sayings of Christ, or 
quotations from St. Paul's Epistles." The process 
follows the course of all naturalistic ethical proposals— 
a deprecating of personal values which no Christian 
can accept. The wail of Professor Seeley in effect is 
repeated, "When the Supernatural does not come in— 
Pessimism raises its head, .... the other has 
become contemptible no less than the self." 1 The 
necessity of a Divine factor for the salvation of the 
world again becomes evident. 

The failure of the modern idea of Progress drives us 
to the same point of view. It was somewhat hastily 
assumed, as the result of evolutionary theories, that 
there was a natural principle of progress in the world, 
and that, by an inevitable process, things were moving 
on to a higher stage. The war has shown this to be 
an illusion. " The belief in perpetual progress as a 
law of nature is a superstition " said Dean Inge, at the 
Leicester Church Congress. “ It has no basis in history, 
or science, or religion. Civilisation has made hardly 
any appreciable change in human nature." 2 We have 
very largely confounded comfort with moral improve¬ 
ment, and concluded that we were better because we 
were better off. We have been rudely disillusioned. 
The barbarities of war revealed depths in human nature 
hardly dreamed of by the present generation. A 
new potentiation of human nature becomes necessary 

1 See above. 

* Church Times, October 17th, 1919. 


48 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 

to redeem civilisation from collapse. Our moral 
standards and practices must be motived from above. 

The application of this argument to the international 
sphere, though profoundly important, need not detain 
us long. The birth of the League of Nations is a matter 
for sincere congratulation and heartfelt thanksgiving, 
but at the best it is only a clumsy instrument. And 
its success or failure depends upon “ the spirit ” behind 
it. In other words, the whole question comes back 
to the personal aspect, no league or association can 
hide the fact that our antipathies and sympathies are 
profoundly personal. We have to abandon the abstract 
way of regarding a nation or state, and realise that it 
is a community of persons, each having value in the 
sight of God, and capable of enriching the whole 
commonalty of men. The problem of international 
readjustment is really the problem of personal 
reconciliation. Change the relation between persons and 
the relations between states will follow. This at once lifts 
the matter from the sphere of schematic arrangement 
to that of spiritual regeneration, from the world of 
sense-experience to that other world of which God is 
the head as the Father of our spirits, Christ the visible 
embodiment, and the Holy Spirit the ruling power. 
General Smuts, in his Manifesto of June 30, 1919, on 
the League of Nations, confirmed the argument of 
this Chapter. “ The promise of the new life, the 
victory of the great human ideals, for which the peoples 
have shed their blood and their treasure without stint, 
the fulfilment of their aspirations towards a new inter¬ 
national order, and a fairer, better world, are not written 
in this treaty, and will not be written in treaties. * Not 


SPIRITUAL REGENERATION—ITS NECESSITY 49 

in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, but in spirit and 
in truth ’ as the Great Master said, must the found¬ 
ations of the new order be laid. A new heart must be 
given, not only to our enemies, but also to us, a contrite 
spirit for the woes which have overwhelmed the world ; 
a spirit of pity, mercy and forgiveness for the sins and 
wrongs which we have suffered. A new spirit of 
generosity and humanity born in the hearts of the 
peoples in this great hour of common suffering and 
sorrow can alone heal the wounds which have been 
inflicted on the body of Christendom.” “ A sound 
and wide view of national interests,” says Lord Bryce, 
“ teaching peoples that they would gain more by co¬ 
operation of communities than by conflict, may do 
much to better those relations ; but in the last resort 
the question is one of moral progress of the individual 
men who compose the communities.” The conclusion 
is inevitable. Not in man, but in God, not in outward 
circumstances but in the hidden man of the heart; 
not from this world, but from the world above, must 
help come. “ The only thing to regenerate the world 
is not more of any system, good or bad, but simply 
more of the Spirit of God ” says Charles Kingsley, in 
Alton Locke. In that alone lies our hope. 


4 


CHAPTER IV 



SPIRITUAL REGENERATION—ITS NATURE 

Redemption must come from above. All social schemes secular. 
Buddhism redemption by annihilation. The Christian view only 
one tenable. 

1. The Supernaturalness of Regeneration. 

This common thought of all New Testament teaching. 

(1) Supernatural in Source. Three types of teaching : 

(а) Johannine. Main conception “ New Birth.” 

(б) Pauline, “ New Creation.” 

(c) Synoptic, “ Kingdom of God.” 

The Divine causality common to all three. 

(2) Supernatural in motive. Humility, generosity, forgive¬ 
ness motived from above ; rooted in Divine facts, e.g., The 
Incarnation and the Sacrifice of Christ. 

(3) Supernatural in end. The regenerate life seeks 
justification in world to come. The Kingdom of God a 
teleological idea. 

2. The Nature of the Regenerate Life. 

(1) A new life. The Life of God in the soul of man issuing 
in a new personality. 

[a) New personalities necessary to new movements. 

( b ) Jesus the Creator of new personalities. Peabody 
quoted. 

(2) A Social Life. Sonship to God means Brotherhood to 
man. Love the law of the Christian life. Individualism and 
Socialism harmonised in Christ. Recognition of this ideal by 
Benj. Kidd and Wm. James. 

(3) A Life of Joy. Christianity brought access of joy. 
Early Church a singing Church. The conquest over despair. 
Application to life of to-day. 


Chapter IV 


SPIRITUAL REGENERATION—ITS NATURE 


’Tis one thing to know, and another to practise ; 

And thence I conclude that the real God-function 
Is to furnish a motive and injunction 
For practising what we know already. 

Browning—Christmas Eve. 

That the world is in need of redemption is not now 
a matter of argument. It is accepted as a fact by all 
schools of thought. The question is, from whence is 
redemption to come ? The suggested schemes, 
however, present a bewildering variety of views, yet 
they all may be classified according to their world of 
reference, either as they take their rise from this or the 
other world. Our social schemes are frankly secular; 
they do not, as a whole, look beyond a rearrangement 
of the things of life, they begin and end within the 
present sensible order. 

Buddhism, again, is a religion of redemption, pro¬ 
posing deliverance from the present inanity of existence 
by asorption into the All, i.e., escape from the evils 
of existence is to come by the escape from existence 
itself. For the Western world, at any rate, this 
scheme is totally inadmissible. Democracy is not 
likely to be attracted by any proposal which holds 
out annihilation or attenuation of existence as the hope 


5* 


52 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 


of the future, for the cry is not less life, but “ more 
life and fuller/' We are thus left with the Christian 
scheme of salvation, which is frankly other-worldly 
in its reference. Deliverence comes from above or it 
comes not at all. It is the result of a Divine irruption 
into our life ; it proceeds by way of spiritual re¬ 
generation and inward renewal, and it is sustained 
by continual reference to that world out of which it 
came. Put shortly, the Christian redemption is super¬ 
natural in its origin, motive and end. In the present 
chapter we propose to discuss the nature of this redemp¬ 
tion as revealed in the New Testament. 

It is the common thought of all types of teaching 
in the New Testament that God in Christ has brought 
to our world a new way of life, Divine in source and 
character, which comes from above and manifests 
the character of that world from which it comes. 
These two conceptions are expounded mainly in 
the Pauline and Johannine writings, and in the Synoptic 
teaching on “ the Kingdom of God." By means of 
various metaphors they unite to present the single 
idea that the Christian life is “ of God." 

The Johannine literature conveys this idea mainly 
through the doctrine of the “ new birth "—a biological 
category which St.John almost alone of New Testament 
writers uses. This metaphor brings out the essentially 
divine origin of this life. Thus St. John specifically 
rules out all lower agencies, when he states that the new 
life of sonship is “ born not of bloods, nor of the will 
of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." 1 This 
again is borne out in the Nicodemus interview, where 

1 John i. 13. RV-margin. 


SPIRITUAL REGENERATION—ITS NATURE 53 

the “ birth from above ” is explained as being of “ water 
and of the Spirit.” 1 The phrase also, “ born from above 
(avwOev ) carries with it the supernatural significance 
we are considering. 

But it is in the Epistles that the Johannine con¬ 
ception receives its fullest and freest expression. There 
the recipient of the new life is said to be “ begotten of 
God.” 2 3 4 5 The same thought is found in the words 
“We are of God.” The repetition of these phrases 
serves to emphasise the essentially Divine origin of 
the change ; it is God Himself Who has come into 
human life to redeem it from its death .3 

Though using another set of terms, St. Paul's 
conception of the new life no less reveals a Divine 
source. It is a “ new creation,” a resurrection, or 
quickening, a metamorphosis or complete transform¬ 
ation, all of which explicitly state or else require a 
Divine agent for their operation. To the Apostle 
Paul, his life as a Christian was as much a Divine crea¬ 
tion as the material world in which he dwelt; “it 
was the God Who said ‘ Out of darkness let light 
shine/ Who shined into our hearts, giving the illumin¬ 
ation consisting in the knowledge of the glory of God 
in the face of Christ .”4 God was in Christ reconciling 
the world unto Himself, and because He was in Christ, 
all things had become new to Him .5 It is a root thought 
with St. Paul that the author of creation and the author 

1 John iii. 5. 

2 1 John ii. 29, iii. 9, iv. 7, v. 1, 4, 18. 

3 Cp. remarkable expression—•" God’s Seed.” 

4 2 Cor, iv. 6. 

5 2 Cor. v. 17. 


54 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 

of salvation are one ; his soteriology is rooted in his 
theology. “ All things are of God.” 1 Likewise his 
doctrine of Grace illustrates the Divine source of sal¬ 
vation. “ By grace are ye saved .... it is the 
gift of God.” 2 3 4 “ In this aspect he habitually sees 
God’s face,” it is " the regnant word of Paul’s 
theology ; ” and the whole content of the New Testa¬ 
ment dispensation is summed up as “ the things 
which are freely given to us of God .”3 Further, St. 
Paul’s description of the Christian life as “ hid with 
Christ in God ”4 as the expression of the Christ living 
within him ,5 as “ the fruit of the Spirit,” 6 or as the 
result of the leading of the Spirit, 7 confirm the notion 
of its Divine causality. 

The Synoptic presentation is not essentially different, 
though at first sight this characteristic seems less 
pronounced. Repentance or change of mind is the 
foremost note of Jesus’ teaching, and the radicalness 
of the change is illustrated in such parables as the 
tree and its fruits. Faith, also, is conjoined with 
repentance, and, once at least, Jesus recognises this as 
due to a Divine factor. 8 But it is in connection 
with the idea of “ the Kingdom of God ” that the full 
nature of the blessing becomes clearer. This, as 
its name implies, is no mere human system, but the 
reign of God in the heart, and entrance to it is only 
possible by a change which is compared to becoming 


1 2 Cor. v. 18, cp. Col. i. 12-20. 5 Gal ii. 20. 

2 Eph. ii. 8. 6 Gal. v. 22. 

3 1 Cor. ii. 12. 7 Rom. viii. 14. 

4 Col. iii. 8 Matt. xvi. 17. 


SPIRITUAL REGENERATION—ITS NATURE 55 


a child again. 1 The conduct too, appropriate to 
vhis Kingdom, is in radical opposition to that which 
pievails without, 2 it is a doing of the will of God ,3 and 
a disposition toward men similar to God’s, with a view 
to, or as a proof of, filial relationship to God Himself .4 
Thus it may be said that the Synoptic doctrine of the 
new life is in deepest harmony with the New Testament 
teaching already described. Although its terminology 
is different, it nevertheless recognises a Divine factor 
in the change to be wrought, which change issues in 
a character so heavenly in quality as to demand 
the supernatural to sustain it in health and vigour. 

The motives of this new life, as presented in the 
New Testament, are uniformly of a supernatural 
character. They derive their power of appeal from 
other-worldly facts ; the lever which lifts this new 
life is never in this world, but in the world above. 
The appeal to humility in John, chapter 13, loses its 
force if the Divine condescension implied in verse 3 be 
denied, and the exhortation of the Apostle Paul to 
have the mind of Christ is expressly based upon the fact 
of the Incarnation .5 Again, the motive of generosity 
in 2 Cor. 8, verse 9, has its driving force from the example 
of Christ, “ Who was rich, yet for your sakes became 
poor,” and the practice of forgiveness in the Christian 
community is urged on the ground that “ God for 
Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” 6 Love is the regener¬ 
ative principle of all conducts but this love springs 

4 Matt. v. 45-8. 

5 Phil. ii. 

6 Eph. iv. 32. 

7 1 Cor. xiii. 


1 Matt, xviii. 3. 

2 Matt. x. 42-43. 

3 Matt. vii. 41. 


56 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 

from the love of Christ, and is really created by the 
sacrifice of God’s Son. 1 St. John expresses this in ar 
ultimate way when he says “We love, because He 
first loved us ” ; the whole Epistle is really an affirni- 
ation of this theme. 2 3 4 5 The other-worldly character 
of Christian ethics pervades the New Testament like 
an atmosphere ; it is not only in isolated texts that 
the appeal is presented, it is the living spirit of the whole. 
The Christian life is born of God ; it is sustained by 
God all the way through. 

The end of this life is no less other-worldly in its 
reference. It seeks its justification in the world to 
come, its eye is fixed upon eternity, it looks toward to 
a judgment 3 which appears to be final ,4 separating 
between the good and the bad, each class being 
apportioned in a way suitable to its affinities. Thus 
the idea of the Kingdom of God is said to be teleological, 
and to attain its consummation in the universal reign 
of God .5 

We now come to the nature of this new life—what 
it is in itself. And here it follows that the essential 
Divineness of its source marks also its content. It 
is God’s own life in man, the result of a renewal of our 
moral nature, an influx of new powers into human 
life, so that the resultant is something new. Nothing 
can be more evident than that the coming of the 
Christian life to humanit}’ was the emergence of a new 


1 2 Cor. v. 14-15. 

2 1 John iv. 19, R.V. 

3 Matt. xxv. 31-46; 2 Cor. v. io ; Matt. vii. 21-22. 

4 Matt. xiii. 40-43. 

5 1 Cor. xv. 28. 


SPIRITUAL REGENERATION—ITS NATURE 57 

type of existence, a standard of virtue utterly different 
from that which prevailed in the world before. It 
involved a complete change in the character and ruling 
dispositions of the subject, so that he might, without 
exa £g era tion, be said to be “ a new man.” This, 
however, does not involve any change in the con¬ 
stitution of human nature, no new faculties are added, 
the change is moral and spiritual, not metaphysical. 
Yet it is so vital as to place the person undergoing it 
in a new category. Henceforth he is a child of 
God, possessing the nature and status of a son ; he 
has been translated from the Kingdom of darkness 
into the Kingdom of God’s dear Son. It is this relation 
to God which is all determinative ; it is the source 
and spring of all subsequent being and doing. Its 
result is really a new personality, of which Christ is 
the Soul, and through which He lives and works again 
in the world. 

It is here that the Christian Gospel has a message for the 
present age. The problem of reconstruction is really 
the problem of the reconstruction of the individual, for the 
history of progress is the history of great men. ‘ ‘ Produce 
great personalities,” says Walt Whitman, “and the rest 
foliows.’’ The movements which have done most for the 
human race all cluster round great names; it is through 
men that God hitherto has changed the face of the 
world. The present need is for the production of great 
souls, the raising up of dynamic personalities who shall 
be the driving force of new movements. Unless this is 
accomplished, our programmes and leagues are likely 
to doom us to disappointment and make us tenfold 
more the children of despair than we were before. 


58 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 


Hence spiritual regeneration is the clamant need of 
the time ; upon the creation of new personalities who 
shall become the soul of the age, the future depends. 
And Christ meets this need, because He is the creator 
of richer personalities than any other teacher; His 
Spirit brings to the birth men who are the vehicles of 
the greatest Personality of history. As a profound 
student of our Lord’s teaching has said, “ Jesus 
approaches the social questions from within; He deals 
with individuals ; He makes men. It is for others 
to serve the world by organisation ; He serves it through 
inspiration. It is for others to offer what the theo¬ 
logians once called a scheme of salvation ; the only 
salvation Jesus offers is through saviours, and saviours 
are those who have sanctified themselves for others’ 
sakes.” 1 

This position is confirmed when we have regard to 
the kind of personality Jesus produces. The regener¬ 
ated man is the social man ; love is of the essence of 
the Christian life. Though the root of all recon¬ 
struction is in the individual, nevertheless the Christian 
salvation is not to individualism, but to social sympathy 
and service. The regeneration which sets a man in a 
new relation to God also sets him in a new relation to 
his fellow ; sonship to God means brotherhood to man ; 
for God is the Head of the race, and Christ is its elder 
brother. Man is no mere unrelated unit, but a member 
of a society; he is the centre of a host of relations, 
and in regeneration it is as a social being that he is 
reconstituted. " Neither pure socialism nor absolute 

1 Professor F. G. Peabody, Jesus Christ and the Social Question, 
Ch. II. 


SPIRITUAL REGENERATION—ITS NATURE 59 

individualism finds warrant in the Gospel/' 1 In 
Christ the two extremes are harmonised. And yet 
the self that is redeemed is a self with all the potenti¬ 
alities of personality in it. Man is more than an indiv¬ 
idual, he is a personality, or so constituted that in being 
saved, he is saved into personality, into a relation with 
other selves whom he is to love, and whose well-being 
is at once the law of his own life and the source of its 
enrichment too. Just because of this, love is the 
characteristic law of the Christian life, the sum of all 
the virtues, the greatest of all the commandments, and 
the fulfilling of the law. Nay, it is more, it is the 
realisation of the Divine Life in man, for “ God is Love." 2 3 

Indications are abroad that encourage the hope that 
the Christian view of life may meet with more favour 
than hitherto. The old individualism is bankrupt 
and dishonoured. Its works decree its doom. The 
tide is running strongly in favour of collectivism. 
“ We are all socialists now." Yet there is little recog¬ 
nition so far that collectivism, to be successful, must 
be run by socialised selves, the danger still remains of 
cleansing the outside of the platter and not that within. 
With profound gratitude, therefore, we have read Mr. 
Benjamin Kidd's argument that social salvation is to 
come through “ the emotion of the ideal," which he 
explains to be “ subordination to the common aims of 
organised humanity. "3 He quotes with approval 
Professor William James’ description of “ the ideal 
social self." “ There is enshrined within me, as within 

1 J. N. Figgis, Civilisation at the Cross Roads, p. 125. 

2 1 Cor. xiii; Matt. xxii. 34-44 ; Rom. xiii. 9-10 ; 1 John iv. 7-8. 

3 The Science of Power, p. 295. 


6 o REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 


everyone of us,” says James, “ an inner man.” This 
inner or real man he describes as “ the ideal social 
or other-regarding self .... which is the ideal 
which beckons him on.” “ What is the nature of the 
ideal social self ? ” asks James. The reply is to the 
effect that it is a self which seeks to set up within the 
individual nothing less than the standards of Universal 
Mind. They are the same standards of Absolute or 
Universal Mind which we attribute to God. It is 
characteristic of this inner self that, to quote James' 
words, “ it can find its adequate Socius only in an 
ideal world.” All social progress, he continues consists 
in the substitution of higher standards for lower, and 
it is the distinctive quality of this inner tribunal that 
it sets up the highest standard of all—that of Universal 
Mind. “ Most men,” he concludes, “ either continually 
or occasionally carry a reference to it in their breast. 
The humblest outcast on this earth may feel himself 
to be real and valid by means of this higher recognition.” 1 
Mr. Kidd seems to rely upon education as the factor 
to erect this social self into such habitual action as to 
ensure social well-being. “ It can only be imposed 
in all its strength through the young. So to impose 
it has become the chief end of education in the 
future.” 3 

Without depreciating the appeal to education—we 
shall deal with this later in our argument—we affirm 
now that spiritual regeneration can alone ensure the 
habitual exercise of this social self. The new man is 
motived from above. Only “ the expulsive power of 

1 The Science of Power, pp. 227-8. 

2 p. 298. 


SPIRITUAL REGENERATION—ITS NATURE 61 


a new affection ” can effectually drive out the self- 
regarding instincts. Affection is personal, the emotion 
of a person towards a person. And affection of this 
supreme kind can only be guaranteed by the in¬ 
dwelling of One Who is Himself Love. 

Finally, the regenerate life is a life of joy. Christ¬ 
ianity has brought a great access of joy to the world. 
Very literally has it been “ glad tidings to all people,” 
the saved man is a happy man. The early Church was 
a singing Church—witness the great hymns. “ The 
Church has come singing down the ages.” 1 The con¬ 
quest over despair is not the least achievement of the 
Christian Gospel, and its potentialities in this direction 
may have immense value for the life of to-day. The 
modem world, like the pagan world into which Christ¬ 
ianity came, is a sad world; it has none of the gaiety 
of the New Testament. True, there is much hectic 
excitement, an orgy of pleasure, and more and more 
elaborate ingenuities to provide a new thrill; but the 
coroner’s court tells only too painfully the dissatisfaction 
and vanity of much that is called “ life.” Men and 
women do not commit suicide from having too much 
joy; it is the unreplenished cup which drives them 
mad—the cup they drink from to the dregs, and then 
still find themselves athirst. The weariness and 
satiety of modern life might be changed into a new 
experience of peace and joy—“ joy unspeakable and 
full of glory ”—if men could be turned to the Kingdom 
of God, which is ” not meat and drink, but righteousness 
and peace and joy through the Holy Ghost.” 


1 T. R. Glover, The Jesus of History, p. 236. 


CHAPTER V 


SPIRITUAL REGENERATION—ITS FRUITS 

World reconstruction and spiritual regeneration. Apparent 
impossibility of the task. The complexity of modern world. 
This, however, a ground of hope, solidarity may be realised on the 
side of the Kingdom of God. The world really constituted through 
individuals. Importance of individual change of character. The 
social results in history. 

1. The Effect of Regeneration in Roman Empire. 

The moral elevation of the Christian community and effect 
upon political and social character of Empire. Inge, Lecky, 
Oman and Harnack referred to. 

2. The Effect in Mediaeval Period. 

The Middle Ages dark. Mechanical view of Christianity 
prevailed, hence comparative failure. Yet not wholly without 
results. Morley and Chesterton quoted. 

3. The Effect in Reformation Period. 

Lutheranism, Calvinism and Puritanism. 

4. The Effect in Eighteenth Century. 

The Evangelical Revival worked a moral revolution. 
Lecky's Testimony. J. R. Green quoted. 

* 

5. The Effect in Modern Period. 

Religious revival the soul of reforming movements. This 
also true of the Mission Field. Darwin’s testimony. Lowell’s 
Challenge. The Church’s task. 


Chapter V 


SPIRITUAL REGENERATION—ITS FRUITS 

Reconstruction is a world-problem; spiritual 
regeneration is an individual thing. At first sight the 
proposal to rebuild the world through the reconstruction 
of the individual appears an impossible task, an attempt 
to balance the pyramid on its apex. The complexity 
of the modem world appears to intensify the difficulty, 
the individual seems so often to be but a mere cipher in 
the intricate organisations of commerce and diplomacy. 
Yet this inter-relation of the world is really a ground for 
hope ; it means that the world is more nearly one than 
it has been hitherto, and the solidarity of humanity 
may be realised on the side of the Kingdom of God. 
Just as the Roman Empire prepared the roads along 
which Christianity travelled in its early days, so may 
the dependence of the modern world provide channels 
for the coming of a Christian civilisation. In the 
last analysis, too, the dependence of one industry upon 
another, one nation upon another, is a dependence 
upon individuals. The action of any considerable 
number of individuals may have a disturbing effect 
upon conditions apparently quite unrelated. The real 
problem is to influence a sufficiently large number of 
people in their ideals to affect the whole. This, indeed, 
was the mission of Jesus. “ He came to alter men’s 


63 


64 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 


wants; .... to inaugurate a new epoch . . 

. . by changing men's desires.” 1 And it is but simple 

truth to say that this is the only way to any real improve¬ 
ment of the world. 

This, in fact, was the way the early Church worked. 
Its influence produced a tremendous moral change 
in the political and social character of the Roman 
Empire. Dean Inge, in his recent book, 2 describes the 
moral elevation of life which prevailed in the early 
Church. 3 Professor Lecky describes in detail the 
effect upon the Empire. He says “ The spirit of Christ¬ 
ianity moved over this chaotic society, and not merely 
alleviated the evils that convulsed it, but also re¬ 
organised it on a new basis. It did this in three ways ; 
it abolished slavery, it created charity, it inculcated 
self-sacrifice.” i He further describes Christianity as 
" the most powerful lever that has ever been applied 
to the affairs of man /’5 “ One great cause of its success 

was that it produced more heroic actions and formed 
more upright men than any other creed/ ,6 Mr. C. W. 
Oman traces the improvement of the lot of the unhappy 
classes to “ a single fundamental Christian truth,” 
viz, “ the importance of the human soul. ”7 

During the mediaeval period, the Church appears 

1 Figgis, Civilisation at the Cross Roads, p. 70. 

2 Outspoken Essays. Published by Longmans. 

3 p. 252. 

4 The History of Rationalism, Vol. II., p. 234 ; see also Vol. I., 

p. 213. 

5 History of European Morals, Vol. I., p. 338. 

6 p. 394 ; see also Vol. II., pp. 4, 20, 25, 63. 

7 Byzantine Empire, quoted by Geo. Jackson, “ B.C. — A.D. : The 
Difference Christ has made, published C. H. Kelly. For the influence 
on Roman legislation see Harnack's The Social Gospel, p. 37. 


SPIRITUAL REGENERATION—ITS FRUITS 65 

in a less favourable light, but in explanation two 
things at least must be remembered, first, the un¬ 
settled state of society through the ruinous wars, 
and, second, Christianity itself was largely under the 
domination of a sacramental, and therefore a mechan¬ 
ical, view of its essence, so that it is not to be wondered 
at if moral achievement suffered. Yet Lord Morley 
confesses, “ We get very wearied of the persistent 
identification of the Church throughout the dark ages 
with fraud and imposture and sinister self-seeking, 
when we have once learned what is undoubtedly the 
most important principle in the study of these times, 
that it was the Churchmen who kept the flickering 
light of civilisation alive amid the raging storms of 
uncontrolled passion and violence/' Even a debased 
form of Christianity was better than the corruption 
of the world which ruled without; “it was the one 
path across the dark ages that was not dark/' 1 

The Lutheran Reformation, while it accomplished 
great changes in political affairs, achieved very little 
for the common people until the genius of Calvin made 
the movement a social force. Under him, Geneva 
became a changed city, and the cradle of Puritanism, 
French and Dutch, English and Scotch. Mark Pattison 
says that Calvinism “ was a vigorous effort to supply 
that which the revolutionary movement wanted—a 
positive education of the individual soul," and that 
“ it saved Europe." 2 

In the eighteenth century, Christianity again proved 

1 G. K. Chesterton. 

2 Essays, Vol. II., p. 31, quoted by Morley, Nineteenth Century, 
Feb., 1892. 


5 


66 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 


the moral leaven to purify and elevate the life of the 
day. The moral state of England was at the lowest 
ebb, moral reform by external means had failed, it 
was the Evangelical Revival under Wesley and White- 
field which provided the motive for a new life. 
Curiously enough, Whitefield attributed the revival to 
a sermon by him on “ The Nature and Necessity of our 
Regeneration, or New Birth in Christ Jesus/’ The 
results of this movement were extraordinary. Accord¬ 
ing to Professor Lecky, it produced “ a great moral 
revolution in England.” 1 J. R. Green bears similar 
testimony. The revival “ changed after a time the 
whole tone of English Society. The Church was restored 
to life and activity. Religion carried to the hearts of 
the people a fresh spirit of moral zeal, while it purified 
our literature and our manners. A new philanthropy 
reformed our prisons, infused clemency and wisdom 
into our penal laws, abolished the slave trade, and gave 
the first impulse to popular education.” 2 

In the modem period, the same story can be told ; 
religious revivals have always led to great reforming 
movements, the moral revolution wrought in the 
individual has been the dynamic of social revolutions. 
This was true of the revival under Jonathan Edwards 
in America, of the Moody and Sankey revival in England 
and of the Welsh revivals of 1859 and 1905-6. Still 
more convincing are the triumphs of the mission 
Field—the civilising influences which have radiated 

1 Eighteenth Century, Vol. II., p. 600. See also Goldwin Smith, 
Cowper, in the English Men of Letters Series, p. 45-6. 

2 Short History, pp. 736-7. See also Morley, Nineteenth Century, 
February, 1892. Compare also Mr. Lloyd George’s recent tribute 
to Wesley's influence. 


SPIRITUAL REGENERATION—ITS FRUITS 67 

from the Mission centre. Darwin’s testimony has 
often been quoted; to-day such testimony may be 
multiplied almost indefinitely. Uganda, the New 
Hebrides, Madagascar, are names that call to mind 
the triumphs of the Gospel and the social reformations 
which have followed. A track of light remains where- 
ever Christianity has been received. Lowell’s challenge 
is never out of date, viz, “ to find a spot ten miles 
square on this planet where a decent man may live in 
decency and comfort and security, supporting and 
educating his children unspoiled and unpolluted— 
a place where age is reverenced, infancy respected, 
manhood respected, womanhood honoured and human 
life held in due regard .... where the Gospel 
had not gone and cleared the way.” Speaking broadly, 
these are the fruits of regeneration everywhere. The 
same causes would produce the same effects, individual 
regeneration would be the basis of world-reconstruction. 
The Church’s task in this generation is to discover 
the power whereby men shall be born again. For this 
the new world waits. 


CHAPTER VI 


METHODS 


Summary foregoing argument. The problem largely personal, 
hence methods largely personal. The place and value of organisa¬ 
tion. The problem involves a new God-consciousness. 

i. We begin with the Christian Church. 

The Church the only institution with an adequate concep¬ 
tion of God and Man. The failure and success of the Church. 
The following things needed. 

(1) A Worshipping Church. A new sense of God required. 

(a) Revival of private and family prayer. 

(b) Revival of public worship. 

(c) The responsibility of the Ministry. 

(2) An Evangelistic Church. The Church’s main function— 
to bring men to God. The Evangel of the Love of God 
the burden of the Church’s message. 

(u) The Appeal to the Ministry. Bunyan’s Evangelist. 
The preaching passion. 

(b) The Study of the Atonement. The war and vicarious 

suffering. Mr. H. G. Wells' approach to Christianity. 

(c) The width of the Christian Message. The Gospel of the 

Kingdom related to all life. Prof. Orr quoted. The 
prophetic function of ministry—wooing and denuncia¬ 
tory. All avenues open to God. 

(3) A Ministering Church. Preaching alone not sufficient. 

The Church as the Body of Christ. Unselfish service. 

(4) A Teaching Church. 


METHODS 


69 


I. —The Relation of Church and School. 

The teaching of Bible in (a) Junior Classes, ( b ) Senior 
Classes. Study Circles. Importance of Expression. 
The “ Gang ” Instinct.” 

II. —The Church and Education. 

The opportunity of the Fisher Act. The failure of 
elementary education. The need of idealism. Effect 
of education in moulding ideals. The laws o 
psychology. Responsibility of the Church for its own 
children as part of daily education. A new order 
of teachers required. 

III. —The Church and Teacher Training. 

The Graded School. Teachers’ Examinations. The 
literature of the Sunday School Movement. Westhill 
Training College. Necessity of training for Theo¬ 
logical Students. The value of co-operation between 
Sunday Schools. 

The Church’s responsibility for the young. This the battle¬ 
ground. Benjamin Kidd quoted. 

The Relation of the Church to the world. 

The Church and world in conflict. Yet Church meant to 
be a moral leaven. A Christian civilisation possible. But 
Civilisation not Christian. The Slum, public house, venereal 
disease, profiteering, strife of Capital and Labour. Hence 
the Church and world at war. A militant Church necessary. 
The indifference of the world. The multiple offensive. 
Justification of the Spirit of Adventure by success of Pro¬ 
hibition in America and defeat of Premium Bonds in this 
country. But a negative policy not sufficient. A positive 
social policy required. The Institute, Boys and Girls Clubs. 
The Church must guard the social life of the people in the 
interests of the soul. 

The Relation of the Church to the Social and Economic 
Order. 

(1) The relation of economic facts to spiritual problem. 
The human factor in housing and industry. Slums and 


70 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 

drink. The test of industry. The joy of work. Co¬ 
partnership. The monotony and ugliness of factory life. 
Men of more value than machinery. 

(2) The need of a spiritual motive. The Church cannot be 
tied, to a theory or party. Its function to inspire. Three in¬ 
dispensable elements on its ideal: (a) The worth of personality 
(b) Society an organism, (c) Service the law of life. The 
power of ideals. 

( 3 ) The grounds of hope. Demand of Labour for share of 
management in industry. Whitleylndustrial Councils. The 
Building Industry and Foster Report. The ideal of service 
accepted. The Challenge to the Church. 

(4) The menace of the drink traffic and impurity. The 
Church must fight. Its allies. 

(5) The Formation of a Christian Council. Its function— 
to mass public opinion and to vivify social conscience. 
Re-union schemes. Doubtful benefit. Christian Councils 
possible now. 

4 - The Relation of the Church to War and Internationalism. 

The Church and war. Pacifism. The League of Nations. 
Possibility of failure. The Church’s duty. The death of 
war. A League of Churches. The Hague Conference and 
German delegates. Dr. Jowett’s appeal. Reservations 
The argument for pacifism. The supremacy of the spiritual. 
The world-alliance of Churches. The Internationalism of 
Christianity. The hour of the Church. The Kingdom 
of God. 


Chapter VI 
METHODS 

The oroblem of world-reconstuction is, as we have 

A 

seen, largely spiritual and personal; spiritual re¬ 
generation involves a return to God and the production 
of new men. This largely dictates the methods to be 
employed. The prime necessity is a new influx of 
Divine power for the redemption of the race. Any 
methods which can achieve this end will justify 
themselves. Some change in our present organisations 
is imperative, yet the mistake of creating organisations 
without ensuring a renewal of spiritual energy must 
be avoided. Organisations are only justifiable as they 
provide channels for the right kind of personalities to 
express themselves. We must insist, however, that 
the impact made by organised effort is so great that 
its value cannot be gainsaid ; the problem before the 
Church now is to so correlate its energies as to ensure 
that the power of its appeal shall be at a maximum. 

Before all else a new God-consciousness is needed, 
a new sense of His reality and character as Infinite 
Love, for in this is involved the whole social life of man. 

i. We begin with the Christian Church. 

We begin here, because the Church, with all its defects, 
is the only institution which has the conception of God 
and man as laid down in these pages as its reason, its 


72 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 


life and its law. Moreover, the Church has never failed 
when this conception has ruled it; its failures have 
come from the fact that the full implications of its ovn 
mission have not always been perceived; or else because 
it has denied its vocation altogether. The bane of 
the Church has been to abstract piety too much from 
human life, with a consequent emphasis upon extem- 
alism of rite or ceremony ; its golden days were achieved 
when it conceived human personality as having supreme 
value for God, for itself, and for all human relations. 
There is, therefore, no need for pessimism ; " the true 
Divine order is ever ready to break into the world, if 
men will only suffer it to break into their hearts/' 1 
But the Church must see that it is an adequate vehicle 
for the Divine order to manifest itself. The following 
things are urgently necessary. 

(i). A worshipping Church. Nothing can be 
accomplished in the direction desired without a new 
sense of God ; the instinct of worship must be cultiv¬ 
ated. ‘ What the world needs is Theocracy ” says 
Neville S. Talbot, in Thoughts on Religion at the Front. 2 
This is true. But this cannot come about unless a new 
delight is found in the presence of God, “ with Whom 
we have to do." If a new apprehension of God is 
indispensable, the Church must mediate that presence 
first to its own people, and then through them to the 
world. The Church ought to be a temple in which 
men feel the reality of God, and are awed into solemnity 
and adoration. Aids to worship do not greatly impress 
us ; the matter is largely in the hands of the ministers. 

1 Dr. John Oman. 

2 P- 59- 


METHODS 


73 


A liturgical service may be very helpful, it may also be 
an offence to God and man, while extemporaneous 
methods of prayer may shock us by their lack of dignity 
and reverence. What is desiderated is the culture 
of the devotional life, and the Church must provide 
opportunities for its own people to pray. Prayer 
circles might be established with great advantage, 
the little group bound together by a common desire 
may find the spirit of worship where this would be lost 
in the larger assembly. Christian people need more 
personal prayer and private meditation ; the family 
altar also needs to be rebuilded in every home. The 
nearer we are to God, the nearer we are to man, and no 
movement manward is likely to succeed if it be not 
first a Godward one. Revivals are bom in the atmos¬ 
phere of prayer. Yet there can be no substitute for 
the great act of public worship, the corporate fellowship 
of the whole Church. Free, guided and silent prayer 
have all been effectual where used with tact. The 
cultivation by the minister of his own devotional life 
is essential; his own sense of God must be continually 
deepened, and the art of communicating that to others 
must be acquired. The great classics of devotion 
should be in every minister’s study, time should be found 
for meditation pure and simple. He must seek to know 
the sacred moments of which Wordsworth speaks, 
when 

in such high hour 

Of visitation from the living God, 

Thought was not 

and be 

Rapt into still communion that transcends 

The imperfect offices of prayer and praise. 


74 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 


Such experience fits men to be priests in a very real 
sense ; they will know how to lead others into the 
Supreme Presence if they are familiar with the way 
in themselves. 

( 2 ). An Evangelistic Church. The Church’s main 
function is to bring men to God, so to proclaim its 
message that men shall discover their affinities to the 
Most High. In addition to what has been urged above, 
the Church must make the Evangel of the Love of 
God real to men and convince them that the Divine 
Fatherhood is a fact. In the last analysis, the doctrine 
of God is all determinative. But to many this sublime 
conception is little more than a golden fancy, a poetic 
dream. Here, then, is the immediate responsibility 
of the Church ; this conception of God must become 
the burden of its message. First of all, this appeal 
must come to the ministry, to the men whose sacred 
vocation it is to declare the facts of the Gospel. A 
new note is required in the preaching of to-day if 
men are to be won for Jesus Christ; there must be 
more passionate pleading. Much preaching is stim¬ 
ulating and helpful, rarely is it moved by a tremendous 
sense of the Divine Love pleading with and dying for 
sinful men. Bunyan’s immortal description of the 
evangelist comes to mind, “ the picture of a very grave 
person .... he had eyes lifted up to heaven, 
the best of books in his hand, the law of truth was written 
upon his lips, the world was behind his back, he stood 
as if he pleaded with men, and a crown of gold did hang 
over his head.” He stood as if he pleaded with men. 
It recalls the moving language of the Apostle Paul, 
" Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though 


METHODS 


75 


God did beseech you by us ; we pray you in Christ’s 
stead, be ye reconciled to God.” The preaching of the 
Gospel might gain greater response if the people could 
feel in it the Divine pursuit “ of those strong feet that 
followed, followed after,” so wondrously imaged forth 
in Francis Thompson’s Hound of Heaven. Not for 
nought is the classic passage on the subject of regenera¬ 
tion followed by the tremendous words, “ God so loved 
the world that He gave His only begotten Son .” 1 
Might not a renewed study of the Atonement bring a 
new note into the preaching of to-day and make it 
instinct with the passion that is ever burning at the 
heart of God ? Revivals of religion have ever been 
intimately related to a fresh perception of the Cross. 
A theory of this great doctrine cannot be attempted 
here, but the conception that God in Christ does for the 
sinner what he cannot do for himself has had more 
impelling power than any other. God suffers for sin 
simply because He is Holy Love, which is the truth 
underlying all substitutionary theories, however crude 
they may be. The war has made plain the need for 
vicarious suffering, and the perception that God Himself 
by a voluntary act, has stooped to share the life of 
His creatures in order to redeem them gives a new out¬ 
look upon the Divine purpose. Mr. H. G. Wells’ 
incursions into the realm of theology are full of 
significance, and his “ God of the Heart ” reveals a 
yearning which the Christian Gospel can alone meet. 
It is the God of Love and the Love of God which men 
need, and the passionate preaching of such a Gospel 
would not fail of response. 

1 John iii. 5-8, 16. 


76 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 


Yet the Christian message is as wide as life. The 
Gospel we preach is the Gospel of the Kingdom of God 
and the Kingdom of God has no frontiers ; the totality 
of human relations is its province. Accordingly, the 
Evangel must be brought into touch with our daily 
existence, with “ all family and social life, all industry 
and commerce, all art and literature, all government 
and relations among peoples—till the Kingdoms of this 
world are become the Kingdoms of our Lord and of His 
Christ. 1 The Christian preacher must approximate 
more and more to the Hebrew prophet, it is his function 
to declare the mind of the Lord about the affairs of men. 
He must woo men into the Kingdom as Jesus did, but 
Jesus was denunciatory as well as wooing, and the 
servant must be even as His master. The preacher 
must sometimes be an accusing conscience—knowing 
the terror of the Lord he must persuade men. God 
comes by many avenues to men, all doors are open to 
Him, and His servant must be a “ voice,” sounding 
through the corridors of all human life in order to 
awaken the attention of the soul. 

(3) A Ministering Church. Preaching alone will not 
suffice ; the evangelism of the whole Church is needed. 
A ministering Church, saturated with Divine Love and 
alive to the whole need of human nature would create 
an atmosphere favourable to the Divine message. The 
social character of the Christian religion, implicit in its 
fundamental doctrine of God as Love, must be made 
explicit in teaching and practice. Man's duty to 
man as involved in his relationship to God must be 

1 Professor J. Orr, The Christian View of God and the World 
P- 329, eighth edition. 


METHODS 


77 


insisted upon more definitely. 1 What is necessary is 
the literal acceptance of St. Paul's idea of the Church 
as “ the Body of Christ,” in which Christ lives and 
through which He works—a Church, which like its 
Master of old, goes about doing good, every member 
of which is a limb of the Body for the performance of 
the Master's will. Room for individual philanthropy 
unhappily, remains abundant, but no Christian can 
escape the burden of so fulfilling the law of Christ. 
If Christians were less selfish, the Church would stand 
in better repute. 

(4) A Teaching Church. The Church must realise 
its pedagogic function. It must train its own people in 
the characteristically Christian view of life. The 
Sunday School organisations offer splendid channels 
for this enterprise, and the Church must see that hence¬ 
forth School and Church are one. For the younger 
children, the Bible must be systematically taught, with 
all the advantages associated with up-to-date apparatus 
and applied psychology, keeping ever before the child 
mind the two cardinal facts of the Biblical revelation— 
the infinite Love of God in Jesus Christ and in the infinite 
value of the human soul. For older classes these truths 
should be related more to the whole field of human 
activity. Nothing more admirable for the purpose can 
be conceived than the manuals published by the 
Student Movement, or the Adult School Movement, 
where present day problems are treated in the light of 
Christian ideas. Study circles are to be preferred to 
the old didactic methods, freer play being given to the 
individuality of the scholars, which alone will ensure 
1 See Matt. xxii. 37-39 ; Luke x. 25-37; 1 John iv. 20, 21. 


78 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 

education in the real sense of the term. This will 
necessitate a round of activities during the week. 
Lectures, classes, guilds, should be pressed into service, 
every avenue explored in order to reach the young mind. 
At the same time, teaching should be conjoined with 
action, scholars of adolescent age should be skilfully 
guided into definite acts of Christian service. Impres¬ 
sion to be lasting depends upon expression, the 
Christian life is an art as well as a science. The “ gang 
instinct may be exploited for this purpose with 
overwhelming success, the feeling of esprit de corp may 
be captured on behalf of Christian missions, or social 
service. The Fisher Education Act, by its Continuation 
Schools offers opportunities which the Church should 
use to the full, so long as it can retain its own point of 
view. Our young people must be taught to think, and 
to think along idealistic lines, as a remedy for the 
appalling defects of our elementary school system. 
It is true education alone will not bring the desired 
transformation in character, but the part education 
plays in moulding the ideals of a nation connot be 
ignored. Modern Germany and Japan illustrate what 
may be done through a persistent education policy. 
After all, the laws of psychology exist for the Kingdom 
of God no less than for the forces of evil, the tragedy 
has arisen in part from the fact that the children of the 
world have been wiser than the children of light. The 
isolation of the Churches from the present system of 
day-school education must be remedied, if not by right 
of entry, then by each Church being responsible for the 
teaching of its own children as a part of the 
day s education. As Christian freedom is essential, 


METHODS 


79 


state-aid and control must be banned. A new order of 
teachers should be called into existence to supplement 
the work of the minister where he cannot perform this 
service—an order which should be given a status equal 
to the ministry itself. 

The problem of the Sunday School also is largely a 
question of teacher-training. This is a vital matter for 
the Church. The Graded School, with its weekly 
training class for each department, in part presents 
a solution of this difficulty, but the situation calls for 
more definite and systematic treatment. The Sunday 
School Union provides courses of study in the varied 
branches of teaching, and every teacher should be 
encouraged to take these. The literature of the move¬ 
ment should be in every school library. The decision 
of one District Sunday School Union to send a number 
of teachers yearly to the Westhill Training College 
should be copied. 1 2 Much can be done by co-operation, 
where schools are too small for such a step, such co¬ 
operation is imperative. “ The Church’s responsibility 
for the young ” is an old phrase, the present age makes 
it terribly urgent. For the next generation, it is the 
strategic centre. On this battleground, the Church 
may subdue Kingdoms and put to flight the armies of 
the aliens. Accordingly we endorse the late Benjamin 
Kidd’s stirring words, “ Give us the young. Give us 
the young and we will create a new mind and a new earth 
in a single generation.” 3 

1 One Denominational Ministerial College at least is arranging 
for a course at this College for each theological student. Such a 
course should be part of the curriculum for all theological students. 

2 The Science of Power, p. 298. 


8 o REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 


2. The Relation of the Church to the World. 

The ideals of the Church and the present world- 
order are mutually destructive. Yet the Church is 
meant to be the moral leaven of the world, permeating 
it with its principles, and constraining it to the adoption 
of its standards. As the salt of the earth and the light 
of the world, its influence is meant to extend to all 
spheres, its business is to get the will of God done on 
earth as it is done in heaven. By these references in 
the New Testament, a Christian civilisation is envisaged 
as possible. The world is God’s world, not the devil’s. 
Yet our civilisation is anything but Christian. A 
civilisation which tolerates the slum and the public 
house cannot be Christian. The prevalence of venereal 
disease is an ugly blot upon our ’scutcheon. Profiteer¬ 
ing mocks the ideal of brotherhood. The strife between 
capital and labour at home and the fear of complications 
abroad are unwelcome reminders that the Kingdom of 
God is far off. These facts, and many others, define 
the relation of the Church to the world as it now is. 
It is that of war. The Church has “ to overcome the 
world,” and until a civilisation arrives which is 
Christian throughout, the Church must be militant. 
We require the moral equivalent of war, the challenging 
by the Church of all that denies its standards. The 
lamentable thing at present is that the Church does 
not count, the world neither fears, nor favours, but 
ignores it. This indifference must be met by open 
attack, the world must be startled into notice of the 
Church. There came a moment in the late war when 
the French troops were hard pressed. The commander 


METHODS 


81 


ask ed whether he should retire, but from headquarters 
came the command “ Advance ! ” It was electric in its 
effect. They rallied to win the day. Something similar 
is needed in the fight with evil, the Church's best strategy 
is to attack. The principle of the multiple offensive needs 
to be applied in the spiritual conflict, the battle against 
the world, the flesh and the devil must be joined all 
along the line. We would counsel militancy, and more 
militancy, and yet more militancy ! Anything which 
degrades personality is an enemy of the Church. Let 
the Church be prepared to strike wherever evil raises 
its head and all that is best in the nation would rally 
to its standard. Compromise is suicidal, timidity is 
sin, but consecrated daring can achieve great things. 
Prohibition came in America because the Church went 
on crusade. Premium Bonds were defeated here 
because the Church made up its mind. The Church 
militant is the Church triumphant; the gates of hell 
shall not prevail against it when it goes forth to battle 
in the name of its Lord. 

Yet a policy of mere negation will not do. Many 
social evils are the result of the prostitution of the 
social instinct. The Church must know the psychology 
of the human soul better than the devil. We would 
prohibit the public house, but we would open the 
institute. The solution in different localities will 
vary, but the principle remains the same—the Church 
must guard the social life of the people. Boys’ and 
Girls’ Clubs would prevent a good deal of hooliganism 
and vice, anything which keeps the people from the 
streets is fraught with possibilities of good. But the 
Church in all its social work must never forget its 



82 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 


business, it is primarily seeking the soul, and this fact, 
while not obtruded, will yet decide the character of all 
it provides. 

3. The Church must define its relation to the 

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ORDER. 

Individual regeneration is the fundamental need, 
where this is secured the problem is simplified. But 
in many cases, social and economic facts separate the 
Church from its constituency, its message reaches only 
a fraction of those for whom it is intended. The effect 
of environment upon character cannot be ignored, it 
always counts for something ; where personality is weak, 
it counts for much. Thus social and economic problems 
are more than social and economic, they are human 
and therefore spiritual. Housing, wages, the conditions 
of industry, are human questions, and in everything 
human the Church is concerned. Slums and drink are 
responsible for poverty, disease and crime. To redeem 
the soul, the Church must attack these evils as well as 
appeal to the soul. The supreme test of industry is not 
the kind of goods produced, but the kind of man and 
woman, the sacredness of personality is everything. 
Judged by this test, little of our industrial system would 
survive, for the worker is too often a hand or tool, seldom 
is he a soul, possessing indefeasible rights ; too fre¬ 
quently he is little more than a cog in the wheel of in¬ 
dustry. How to make work a joy, not a burden is the 
problem, to restore a new sense of worth and dignity to 
the artisan. For this some form of co-partnership seems 
imperative, the worker must cease to be a " thing,” and 
become a living member of a co-operative whole. We 
have observed how working men increase visibly in man- 


METHODS 


83 


hood when they enter “the staff ’ ' of an industrial concern. 
Why should not every individual become a member of 
“ the staff ? It is not only a matter of remuneration, 
it is rather a question of status. Invest the workers’ 
position with dignity, remove the feeling of being an 
underling, and much of the bickering and suspicion 
which mar the industrial world would be eliminated. 
Again, something could be done to beautify some of 
our workshops. Why should a factory be uniformly 
an ugly place ? Insensibly, the soul revolts against 
monotonous and sordid conditions ; no wonder if the 
unstable seek relief in undesirable ways. Something 
might be done to relieve the dulness of mechanical 
labour by providing a change from the production of 
one article to the production of another. Better still 
the joy of making a complete article should, as much 
as possible, become a factor in the industrial system. 
In other words, men must come before machinery, and 
persons before profits, the basis of industry must be 
the welfare of human beings. 

Such a conception as this, calls for the championship 
of the Church, for nothing but a spiritual motive will 
alter the present basis of competition and suspicion to 
one of co-operation and peace. Yet the Church cannot 
be tied to any party or economic theory, because its 
ideal is not fixed, but progressive. Its function is to 
inspire, to provide the spiritual motives by which 
social reform will be possible. Its ideal provides at 
least three elements which are indispensable for the 
solving of the social problem. 

(a) Its profound conception of the worth of 
personality, or as the Bishop of Winchester phrased it, 


84 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 


“ the value, and the equal value of every human life.” 1 

(b) The conception of society as an organism, because 
of which all suffer or prosper together. 

(c) The conception of service or love as the law of 
life. 

The faithful proclamation of such an ideal would 
not fail of a far-reaching influence. It would provide 
a more favourable atmosphere for the reception of the 
Church’s more directly spiritual message, in disarming 
suspicion and antagonism where these have been 
engendered by a one-sided emphasis. It is true the 
Church would have to rely upon its own resources, upon 
the power of ideas and ideals. But ideals have power; 
incarnated in human lives, they are operative to great 
issues; when grounded in a divine passion, they are 
omnipotent. 

Happily the situation is not without hope. The 
demand in the labour world for some share in the 
management of industry is in line with the Church’s 
ideal too much for it to fail to arouse its sympathy, 
it is the protest of the human personality against the 
subversion of itself. Here the Church may find its 
opportunity, it is the line along which social and 
industrial advance may come. By far the most promis¬ 
ing scheme yet outlined is the Industrial Councils of 
the Whitley Report, which provides for a joint council 
of employers and employed to manage a given industry. 
So far as we know, the Building Industry has the honour 

1 Church Congress, 1913. (N.B. “ Mr. Paterson, in his Nemesis 

of Nations, has shown how, one after another empires have arisen 
and decayed through this very cause, that they treated the vast 
mass as mere tools, ‘ chattels,’ as the law said.” J. N. Figgis, The 
Will to Freedom, published by Longmans, p. 151.) 


METHODS 


85 


of being the pioneer in trying to realise this nobly 
conceived idea. The Foster Report is hailed as an 
epoch-making document by Employers’ Representatives 
and Trade Union leaders alike, and was the subject of 
a remarkable debate in the Building Trades Parliament, 
on the 14th August, 1919. Competitive enterprise was 
definitely repudiated and the nobler one of service 
substituted. The whole issue was admirably summed 
up in a speech of lofty idealism by Mr. Thomas Graham, 
Chairman of the Scottish National Federation of Build¬ 
ing Trades Employers. Replying to an Amendment 
which aimed at preserving the present system, he said, 
“ The motive of material gain has led us into the morass 
of the present time. The mover of the Amendment 
knows that ‘ love of money is the root of all evil/ and 
yet he would make it the mainstay of effort. Has he 
forgotten that it is easier for a camel to go through 
the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the 
Kingdom of God ? Gain is not the real incentive to 
effort. There is another and greater incentive, and 
that is service. What was it took the young men of 
this country by their thousands to France ? The 
incentive was not gain, it was service. Yet when a 
further great national effort is required—and one in¬ 
volving no risk to life or limb, we are asked to appeal 
to man’s lower nature and not to his higher. Love of 
gain says to the strong man, ‘ Take,’ and compels the 
weak man to the wall. It leaves us in the same old 
slough of profiteering and cheating—of cunning and 
lying—with all their accompaniments of poverty, disease 
and death. The times are critical—the road we are on 
leads to ruin. But along the road the report invites us 


86 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 


to enter. I can see a new Britain liberated, free from 
oppression, misery and crime—a Britain greater, grander 
than ever before—leading the nations in the new era 
of civilisation. Let us enter that road.” 1 

It is encouraging to report that these noble words did 
not fail in their effect. The Report was carried with 
an overwhelming majority. A new idea has entered 
industry and mutual agreement by hitherto opposing 
parties has been attained. Such a result is both an 
encouragement and a challenge to the Church. It 
means that the ideal of service can win if pressed 
persistently enough. The Church has only to pro¬ 
claim its message with fervour and faithfulness to see 
a new spirit possess the industrial world with the promise 
of better things to be. 

Since the above was written, the situation unfortun¬ 
ately has hardened, but the ideal remains. 

Further, the Church must realise the menace of the 
the Drink Traffic and of Impurity. These two things 
are related more than often appears ; a blow at the 
first would mean an immense elevation in morality. 
Here, the moral equivalent of war will be more necessary 
than in the foregoing crusade, for the vested interests 
and passions are strong. Yet there is no option but to 
fight. War must be declared, and any loss of support 
braved. The Church would often have been stronger 
without the patronage of certain people ; it cannot 
afford to be entangled with those who are not in 
sympathy with its fundamental mission. Neverthe¬ 
less allies abound of unexpected potency. The success 
of Prohibition in America is a great asset; the new 

1 The Venturer, January, 1920. 



METHODS 


87 

scientific attitude to alcohol is another. Prohibition 
could be won in this country in a few years if the 
Church made up its mind. 

For the social work of the Church a new organisation 
is needed, embracing the whole of the Churches in the 
country without respect to denomination. This 
Christian Council might do for the country what the 
Church Congress and National Free Church Council 
do for the respective bodies they represent—focus the 
Christian conscience and make it blaze upon the evil 
places of our national life. If each Church in the land 
were a Gentre of holy redemptive energy, if each minister 
were a prophetic voice aflame with Divine passion on 
behalf of righteousness and love, such a council would 
mass this effort and make it well-nigh invincible. 
Organised district by district, county by county, 
representatives of the Churches could gather together 
frequently in their local and county committees for 
the discussion and formulation of a Christian policy 
toward the evils of the day. United action could be 
taken in each locality not only to protest against 
unrighteousness, but for the guarding, and, where 
necessary, the provision of pure amusements and healthy 
recreation. Adequate housing would turn many hovels 
into homes, the creation of happy homes would destroy 
many evils which now seem insoluble. Here the 
Christian Council could stimulate Local Authorities to 
build suitable houses. The work of such a council 
would be endless, but its chief function would be the 
task of creating and vivifying the social conscience. 

This seems a more hopeful project than the schemes 
of federation and re-union now being discussed. These 


> > 


> 



88 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 


are likely to be prolonged in negotiation even if they 
eventuate in anything finally—which from the history 
of such negotiations is doubtful—while such committees 
as have been described could be formed at once. Such 
a scheme, provided it had the white hot support of the 
Churches might save the country for Christ, might even 
produce a Christian England. 

4. The Church must define its attitude to 
War and Internationalism. 

The Christian conscience has been deeply wounded 
by the War, there is a dim feeling that something is 
wrong. Yet there are few signs that the real bearing of 
the problem is perceived. In our judgment, it is not this 
or that war which must be condemned, it is war itself as 
being utterly alien to the Christian law of love. No re¬ 
construction is possible in a world over which there 
hangs the perpetual menace of war. Railing at pacifism 
is not sufficient, it is the war-theory which is at the 
judgment bar, for the world ruin is its legacy. 
“The painful results vindicate us ” (writes Mr. 
John Bums in a pathetic letter to the Nation , in 
which he mourns the death of his only son). The Church 
must be prepared to do some thinking, and emphatically 
it is a mockery of thought which condemns all war 
except the particular war we may be involved in. 
These special pleadings should be abandoned and the 
issue frankly faced. If the war-theory is justifiable, 
well and good, let us resign ourselves to the Nietzsche’s 
and Bernhardi’s of the world, to smoking Belgiums, and 
blood-strewn Armenias, for these are the issues of war. 
But if it is not, then in Gods name,let us seek another 
way. The League of Nations is one way, and it may 


METHODS 


89 

be a magnificent way out of our troubles. Every 
Christian will pray that the hand of God may be upon 
it, every Christian will give it his enthusiastic support. 
Already the League has behind it a magnificent record 
of solid achievement. In a single year it has proved 
itself capable of dealing with danger spots in Vilna, in 
Silesia, in the Aaland Islands, and in Albania, in the 
last two-mentioned instances it was successful in 
preventing war. We would urge therefore the great 
responsibility upon our Churches to grant the League 
the utmost moral and financial support. But it is a 
League of Nations to enforce peace, and it is conceivable 
that, in a crisis, its machinery may break down amid the 
conflagration of actual war, the League may fall asunder 
and be replaced by new alliances. What then ? Are 
we to have the same manipulations of texts, the same 
miserable attempt to show that Satan can be cast out 
by Satan, that war can end war ? If not, what ? 
Only one way lies open, and the Church must tread that 
way. War must be forbidden to its members, and 
should war arise, the Church must be prepared to enter 
the arena as Telemachus did of old, and perish between 
the combatants. In that day war itself would die, 
and be buried, never to rise again. But if the Christian 
Church were prepared to act thus, such a day would 
never come, such a moral change would have been 
wrought in the world that war would be unthinkable. 
The true guarantee of the League of Nations is a League 
of Christian Churches, having this as its basis. Utopian 
as this may sound, attainment is not impossible. The 
conscience of the world is awake, it is convicted of sin, 
the pathway described is alone the pathway of advance. 


go 


REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 


At the Conference of the World Alliance of Christian 
Churches held at the Hague, an incident took place 
which ought to fill every Christian heart with profound 
gratitude and boundless hope. The German delegates, 
in response to a direct challenge from M. Wilfrid Monod 
of Paris, made a confession that they “ personally 
considered the violation of the Belgian neutrality in 
1914 as morally wrong.” Further, they reported that, 
after a meeting with the French, Belgian and Italian 
delegation, “ they stood there joining hands with each 
other in the face of our Lord and Saviour, and confessing 
with one mouth and one heart, ‘ We confess, we join 
hands, we condemn war, we condemn the idea of 
revenge/ ” (The Christian World, October 9th, 1919 .) l 

Such a report makes it possible to believe in a real 
League of Christendom, which, by definitely basing 
itself on Christ’s law of love, should veto war forever 
from the lives of Christian men. Dr. Jowett’s recent 
call to the leaders of Christendom to summon a 
conference, undisturbed by the rattle of the sword, 
to find a way out for a war-distressed world, awakens 
hope that something may yet be done. We fear, how¬ 
ever, that the reservations of Christian men, even 
honoured leaders, obscure the full duty of the Church 
in this respect. The propaganda for peace which keeps 
the sword in reserve cannot be regarded as satisfactory, 
and the arguments used to support the position are 
unworthy. It is illogical t® defend war on the ground 
that Christ’s teaching about non-resistance applies only 

1 (The Copenhagen Conference (Aug. 1922) is too recent for any 
adequate report to have appeared, but it indicates the line of 
advance). 


METHODS 


9i 


to the individual and not to the nation, and yet accuse 
the German warmakers as acting in defiance of 
Christianity. Both views cannot be held ; we cannot 
invoke the Christian law against our enemies and 
discard it when it relates to ourselves. Christ’s law of 
love embraces nations as well as individuals. A still 
deeper objection emerges against the reservation in 
question. It is said that the world is not ripe for 
Christian methods. When will it be ripe ? Will war 
ripen it ? War breeds war, and war to end war is not 
only a contradiction in terms but in idea. Curiously 
enough, some of these advocates believe that Christian 
principles will finally triumph, but they postpone the 
event to some dim future. If these principles can 
conquer in the future, why cannot they conquer now ? 
If they cannot conquer now, what hope is there for 
thinking that their efficacy will yet be demonstrated ? 
Further, some of the pleas advanced to defend war are 
mere subterfuge, viz., “ The soldier is before all things 
a man who is ready to die for his country.” 1 This is 
sheer nonsense ; if taken literally, it would mean the 
impossible paradox that the soldier is the supreme 
pacifist. The theory of war is, “ Kill, or be killed,” 
and victory in the material sense, goes to the side 
which can do the most execution in the shortest time. 
Neither can the plea be allowed, that war is a necessary 
evil, or the choice of the lesser of two evils. For the 
Christian cannot choose to do an evil, he may have to 
suffer an evil, as our Lord did on the Cross, but the 
performance of anything recognised as evil is forbidden 
him. The root cause of this contradiction however, 

1 B. H. Streeter, Papers for War Time, No. 20. 


92 REGENERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 


lies in a lack of faith in the spiritual world. Belief in 
the supremacy of the spiritual, vetoes any appeal to 
carnal weapons. The spiritual must triumph by 
methods of its own. If love be the final thing in the 
universe, it must be capable of attaining its goal by 
means of itself, it must contain the secret of its 
own victory. To affirm the contrary is unfaith. More¬ 
over, any real understanding of the doctrine of the 
Atonement involves a complete breaking away from 
methods of physical force. Love also is a power, the 
greatest power in the world, and in the Atonement, 
God makes His master-appeal to the human heart. 
As the Body of Christ, the Church must make the same 
appeal, it has no right to make any other. This will 
involve a world-organisation of Churches, the 
internationalism of Christianity must create an organ 
through which to work. We would have every Church 
in Christendom linked up with the World-Alliance, 
and every member taught to think in terms of the 
Kingdom of God. The old nationalism must be super¬ 
seded, let the catholicity of the Church become a fact. 
The modern missionary movement has already done 
something to break down racial barriers and 
widen horizons. The birth of the International mind 
is a factor of deepest significance. A world-view is 
not impossible and the Church’s basic principles demand 
it—the Christian is the true citizen of the world. 

The hour of the Church has come. A new-wo rid 
order lies in its lap, the venture of faith alone is needed 
for realisation. Possibly such a crusade would entail 
suffering, but the suffering would be short-lived, the 
blood of the martyr would be not only the seed of the 


METHODS 


93 


Church, but of the new world also. For this cause the 
Church is called in these days, like Luther, it can do no 
other; its success depends upon its obedience to the 
heavenly vision. A new heaven and a new earth 
wherein dwelleth righteousness and peace are within our 
reach, “the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth 
for the revealing of the sons of God/’ 1 The reconstruc¬ 
tion of the world waits for reconstructed personalities. 
And reconstructed personalities wait for the Church 
to rise in the might of its Evangel and in the world-wide 
vision of Redeeming Love to consecrate itself to the task 
of making the Kingdoms of the world the Kingdom of 
our God and His Christ. 


1 Rom. viii. 19, R.V. 


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